


Are You Ready?

by Killaurey



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-03-11 01:56:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13514340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killaurey/pseuds/Killaurey
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.





	1. Best Laid Plans

  
"I _hate_ him!" Sakura bursts out, waving her handful of weeds for extra emphasis. Clumps of dirt escape the weeds to smack her cheek and leave dirty trails down her already dirty clothes and arms. Her hands are lost causes entirely. "It's entirely his fault! Sasuke left and then Naruto left too and then I'm here all alone and I had to find my own teacher because he is just _that useless_."  
  
"Don't be shy," Ino comments dryly, from where she's watering her father's more expensive, delicate plants, "tell me how you really feel."  
  
Sakura tosses her weeds in the bucket Ino has thoughtfully provided for that and goes to work yanking out more of them. The spikey stems bite into her fingers and the roots cling to the soil and resist her as she works. It's an excellent form of stress relief.  
  
Another handful gets pulled from the dirt with a rip that she can feel all up her arm. "I don't think," Sakura says, "that he ever spared a single thought for me. I didn't notice at first that he was obsessed with Sasuke because…" she falters and a look from Ino has her sighing and telling the truth, "because _I_ was obsessed with Sasuke and so it seemed natural that he would be too. And no one can ignore Naruto, even though almost everyone tries. But me? He could ignore me," Sakura says bitterly. "Sasuke cared even less. Only Naruto paid any attention and that's just… _augh_!"  
  
She kicks the bucket and then stomps after it angrily to go and pick up the mess it's strewed around. When Ino doesn't laugh, doesn't even crack a smile, Sakura mentally upgrades her friendship with her from 'tentative-post-rivalry-BFF' to just 'BFF'.  
  
"Well," Ino says, "at least the joke's on them now, right? I mean, you're getting personally trained by Tsunade, the _Hokage_ , and your sensei is left with the shame of being so bad at teaching that one of his students went evil and the other two found their own teachers." Ino wrinkles her nose. "Which, seriously, that's ridiculous levels of bad." Ino considers that. "Maybe even _legendary_ levels of bad."  
  
"Unless there's worse out there, whose teams died and so no one can complain about the teaching. Hard to do that when you're dead, I guess," Sakura says moodily. "But it still is utterly unfair that I got shafted. Am I that ignorable?"  
  
"Not to me," Ino says firmly, a funny little smile on her lips. "Now come on, kill those weeds and then we'll go get ice cream and plan how you can ignore him. After all, turnabout is fair play and he's no longer your sensei."  
  
"Do you think he'll even notice?" Sakura asks doubtfully.  
  
"If he doesn't," Ino says bluntly, "then he never cared at all about Team Seven. You're all that's left of it."  
  
Sakura flinches at that truth. "And if he does?"  
  
"Then he gets to figure out how to fix it. He owes _you_ , Sakura. Remember that."  
  
"I will," Sakura says, scowling. "Believe me, I will."  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The plan they wind up going with is simple. Almost too simple to even be considered a plan but Sakura decides that it's the best one and Ino, after some deliberation of their more elaborate (but impractical) options agrees reluctantly.  
  
The entire plan can be summed up as: Sakura will live her life as if Kakashi-sensei does not exist.  
  
Neither of them thinks this will be overly complicated. After all, Kakashi-sensei has zero reason to come and see her (this realization had had Sakura reaching for another bowl of ice cream) and she had even less reason to go and see him now that she had a proper teacher who knew how valuable a student she was. (That was Ino's contribution.)  
  
Day one goes astonishingly well. So does day two and day three and all the way through day seven. Sakura finds that the longer she pretends Kakashi-sensei doesn't exist, the easier it is to pretend that she really _doesn't_ notice the fact that he stops by once a day, while she's training and whenever he's not on a mission, to watch her and Tsunade-shishou.  
  
He never says anything, so ignoring him is made easier. The fact that it makes her feel like she's holding bits of glass in her hands, Sakura tells herself, is something that will pass. She just has to get used to it. There is no Team Seven. The sooner her feelings cotton on to that, the better it'll be for everyone involved.  
  
Right?  
  
Another week and six days pass in a similar manner, with her training in the fine art of being a medic nin going extraordinary well.  
  
As Sakura trudges home from the hospital, tired and with aching hands (running chakra through them for hours is something Tsunade-shishou says will get more comfortable with practice) she finds herself in a hopeful mood. She'd read, in some silly book of superstitions borrowed from Ino, that it took three weeks, twenty-one days, for a new habit to really stick. If she was lucky, then she'd get through the next day and it would no longer feel quite as hard.  
  
Of course, when had she ever been that lucky?  
  


* * *

  
  
Tsunade stares at her ANBU guards and resists the urge, barely, to toss them all out so she can get drunk as quickly as possible. Three things stop her from doing just that. One, Shizune will find a way to make her life miserable if she does. Two, while Sakura has made an admirable effort for putting the nasty business with her team behind her, it's painfully obvious to Tsunade that her student wishes things had gone better and probably doesn't _really_ want anything horrific to happen to her former teammates.  
  
She considers that a moment. Probably, Tsunade decides, is definitely the most important word in that point.  
  
Third, and most important, is that she knows exactly the state that Konoha is in right now and they cannot afford to have one of their most efficient Jounin out of action especially not when he's been taking ANBU missions, at her request.  
  
"You're sure," Tsunade says, like she wishes they really weren't, "that he's lost all memory?"  
  
ANBU Cat shifts uncomfortably. "We're uncertain if it is memory loss, Hokage-sama. But Morino-san and Hiromasa-san are with him at the moment but currently estimate that his memories only extend to a point five years ago. Anything after, he has no recollection of."  
  
"I want to see him," she says, standing and picking up official hat of office. Tsunade doesn't feel she's worthy of the hat but there's some places that protocol, even by her, must be observed. "One of you come with me."  
  
The two agents exchange glances. "I'll attend you," ANBU Ferret says, his voice low and rumbly. "ANBU Cat will ascertain your office remains secure."  
  
Tsunade doesn't bother to dignify that with words, just a nod, and both she and ANBU Ferret (horrible name, really) disappear in a swirl of leaves. They reappear in a darkened tunnel, lit only by a few tiny jutsu-traps creatively wrought to light up whenever a chakra presence comes within a few feet of them.  
  
They're deep under the Hokage Monument. She doesn't stop to get her bearings, doesn't need to, just strides down the hall that lights up as she walks. The combination of Morino—head of torture and interrogation—and Hiromasa—ANBU's commander—is a potent one and limits where they would be.  
  
ANBU Ferret keeps pace, walking just a few steps behind her. Her escort, not someone she needs, and Tsunade has learnt enough in the last few months to know that she's got to keep him around until she's with Hiromasa and Morino, no matter how it grates on her.  
  
"What happened to the rest of his team?" she asks as they make their way up a flight of stairs. The jutsu lights race alongside them.  
  
"Two dead," ANBU Ferret says promptly, without hesitation. "One alive. Unwounded."  
  
Tsunade nods. They both know the odds of coming away unscathed from a battle that killed two teammates and left a third… changed. She says nothing. If there is a traitor in their midst it will be found out during the debriefing. That's what they pay Yamanaka-san, Head of Intelligence, a good bit of money to find out.  
  
That the surviving agent brought back their injured companion instead of just deserting, however, makes her wonder if it wasn't just obscene luck. Tsunade hopes so. Two agents down is bad enough.  
  
"Inform Morino-san that I'll want the debrief reports of the entire mission," she says. "As soon as he and his team can get them."  
  
"Yes, Hokage-sama."  
  
She comes to a stop in front of a plain door that looks like every other one in the compound. It thrums against her senses with security jutsu, feeling like a caged storm against her chakra. Tsunade places one hand flat against the door, pushing a smidgen of her chakra through her palm.  
  
The wards crackle audibly and then part. "Remain here," Tsunade says. "I'll be out soon enough."  
  
ANBU Ferret nods and positions himself with his back to the wall, right beside the door. As he fades into the stonework--quite literally, with a jutsu to hide his presence--she enters the room that unlocked for her.  
  
In theory, there was no door that was to be barred and locked from her access. Theory, Tsunade has found, has little bearing in the real world. With a shake of her head, she lets the door fall shut behind her. The door jutsu snap to life as it latches.  
  
The room she finds herself in is dark.  
  
No jutsu here to light her way.  
  
It would be inconvenient but she doesn't need them. Tsunade unfurls her chakra enough to wrap her around herself like a cloak, so that the other security jutsu here know not to trigger at her presence, and walks forward.  
  
If she wasn't supposed to be here, she knows this room would turn her nightmares real. She's studied the schematics of the trap jutsu and has admired them. She has no wish to be caught in them. There are all sorts of strengths and she's aware of her own weaknesses.  
  
Her nightmares have nearly always been stronger than her faith. That's been changing lately but Tsunade sees no reason to risk it pointlessly.  
  
The room is not very large and in seconds she's at a second door. The wards on this one are stronger but subtler. Harder to tell they're present, she knows, if you've been hit by one of the traps here. Her chakra gains her entrance to the second room and she finds herself in a long hallway.  
  
It's utterly silent.  
  
There's light, now, in tiny lines that trail from the ceiling to the floor in regular intervals. They illuminate hardly anything. Tsunade barely spares the doors on either side of her a glance and walks three down and then chooses the left door.  
  
Her hand flares with chakra a third time and the door cracks open.  
  
Hiromasa is at the door in a flash, his Byakugan active. "Hokage-sama," he says, after a moment, "we've been expecting you."  
  
"You assumed I might show up," she says, aware of the word-trap, "but did not ask for my presence."  
  
The Hyuuga, disgraced and turned to the darkness, shrugs.  
  
"Security must be observed," he says and because he's right, she lets him get away with that. "Come in." He backs away from the door, leaving her room enough to enter without feeling trapped.  
  
Trapped, uncomfortable ninja are dangerous ninja.  
  
"How is he?"  
  
"If it's a jutsu meant to disorient, it's done exceedingly well," Hiromasa says, sitting on the edge of the utilitarian stainless steel table despite there being chairs around it. Tsunade doesn't blame him. The table is probably more comfortable than the metal chairs. The only light comes from a single bulb that dangles above the table. There's another door on the other side of the room.  
  
Beyond it, she knows, is Morino and their potentially compromised agent. "You don't think it was meant to disorient?"  
  
Hiromasa grimaces. "It certainly did so," he says, "but I don't think that was the point of the jutsu. I would hazard a guess that it was meant to de-age as a primary objective. The accompanying disorientation that came with was merely a secondary characteristic."  
  
"Can you reverse it?"  
  
"Basic measures to do so have already been done. They failed." He rests his elbows on his knees, his Byakugan still active, his head turned slightly so that his blind spot doesn't cover the room behind them. "We can try the more experimental measures but it might be safer for all involved if we give it time. This sort of jutsu tends to have a set time it lasts before expiry."  
  
Tsunade nods. That matches with what she knows of de-aging jutsu. Her own research said much the same when she'd looked for a way to keep her appearance youthful. "We'll see if it can expire before trying anything else," she says. "Is he a danger to the village?"  
  
"No more than any other ninja found, as far as they know, out of their timeline."  
  
It's her turn to grimace and she does so. Tsunade doesn't even want to imagine what her reaction would be to being suddenly years out of step with her memories. "I'll have to speak with him," she says, "and gauge his threat level for myself. Being around people who he knows might trigger something."  
  
"He knows most people already," Morino says from the far side of the room. He leans in the doorway, looking disgruntled. "Didn't believe me when I said who I was. Still thinks I'm barely Chuunin."  
  
Tsunade's lips twitch with repressed amusement. "Does he believe you now?"  
  
"He's trying," Morino says, "but that's the problem. He already knows me and Hiromasa and he'll know you, Hokage-sama. Nothing about us has changed except we're older and more advanced in our specialties. I don't think that's going to be enough to trigger any current memories."  
  
"Not unless we triggered a particularly traumatic memory," Hiromasa agrees reluctantly.  
  
She no longer finds herself smiling even slightly. "Is he awake?"  
  
Both Morino and Hiromasa nod.  
  
"I'll talk to him," she says, "and then we'll decide what to do about him."  
  


* * *

  
  
Hatake Kakashi was confused, unhappy, and very, very uncomfortable. The last thing he remembered was being on a solo mission out in Ame and then the world had gone blurry around him and he'd found himself staring as a Konoha ninja was cut down in front of him. On the ground had been the body of another Konoha nin, her neck clearly broken.  
  
The uncomfortable part, he blames on the metal chair. It's designed to cause a level of discomfort and he's been sitting in one for hours.  
  
Confused and unhappy are harder for him to decide exactly why. It is, he thinks, because none of this new, mad world makes sense. He'd gone from a sunny sky, to storming rain, and had been slow to respond when the enemy--had to be the enemy--attacked him. He knew he owed his life to the third Konoha nin, who'd managed to get the both of them out of the way with a complex transportation jutsu.  
  
That had been confusing enough. But then the ninja, his savior, had muttered something about not wanting to talk to Tsunade-sama about this failure and he'd asked why, confused. Tsunade-sama hadn't been in the village for years. Had she recently returned? Why couldn't he remember this mission while the other one, the one he'd just been on, was clear as crystal in his memories.  
  
"Look," the Konoha nin, who he didn't remember being part of ANBU, had said, "we're going to retrieve the bodies of our comrades and see if we can't complete the mission objectives. Then we're heading back home and we'll sort it out then."  
  
That had made perfect sense to him even though he'd had to ask what the objectives for the mission were. They were clearly on the same side--the other nin wasn't lying, he could smell that--and maybe working the mission would make him feel better.  
  
It had worked. For the duration of the mission.  
  
Kakashi shivers as he remembers what the village had looked like as they'd returned. There had been signs of heavy battle. Again. Things that he could swear had just been repaired were old and weathered and other things were gone entirely, as if they'd never existed. He wishes they'd left him with a kunai. Not so he could attack anyone--they were his own, even if he was confused about this upside down world where Morino was more than a Chuunin working the mission hall and Hyuuga Hiromasa was no longer a rising star of his clan and instead, ruled over ANBU--but so he was armed. It would make him feel better the way few other things could.  
  
Instead, he just feels unsettled and lost.  
  
He knows the people, at least some of them, but he doesn't know who they are now. What had happened? His head pounds as he tries, strives, against his memories and finds nothing but what he already knows.  
  
Kakashi comforts himself that, in a pinch, he can use the chair as a weapon. It won't get him very far, not when he's deep in the ANBU compound, but it's better than nothing. The door opens again and Morino steps back into the room, his manner more respectful than it had been when he'd just been with Hiromasa.  
  
He understands why the moment that Tsunade-sama enters the room, her brown eyes sharp, her hair tidy, and wearing the robes and hat of the Hokage. _What happened to the Sandaime?_ Kakashi wonders. _And how did they get Tsunade-sama back to the village after she swore never to enter it again?_  
  
"Hatake Kakashi," she says, "I hear you're a bit confused."  
  
That's so like her that he finds he's relaxing against his conscious will. "Tsunade-sama," he says, still bewildered. "What's going on?"  
  
She sighs. "That's what we're going to find out."  
  
Kakashi has never found those words quite so ominous before as Tsunade-sama, the Hokage in this different world, settles down to begin figuring out what's wrong with him.  
  


* * *

  
  
"He's a mess," Tsunade says flatly, hours later, in the outer room once again. Kakashi is asleep, due to a jutsu designed to force sleep on a person, his head drooping over the uncomfortable chair he's still sitting in, in the other room.  
  
"Are his memories inaccurate?" Hiromasa asks. "I did not spot any inaccuracies."  
  
"No," she says, "which is part of the problem. He's thoroughly convinced that it's not a matter of what's wrong with him--it's what's wrong with _us_."  
  
"A genjutsu?"  
  
"Likely what he's thinking," she allows. "That would provide an explanation that makes reasonable sense to his side of the story. But I'm inclined to believe that the de-aging theory is more likely. Of course, from his end, that's the implausible option."  
  
Hiromasa and Morino look at one another, gauging the situation. "What are we going to do with him?" Morino asks. "We can't keep him in confinement. Someone will notice. Ninja are the worst gossips."  
  
Tsunade wishes she could argue that and can't. She's no better. "Get Yamanaka Inoichi to review the case and we'll get him to do a full mind-search in five days if Hatake isn't showing any signs of being himself in the proper timeline again."  
  
"And in the meantime?"  
  
"I'm going to have to find a way to apologize," Tsunade says darkly, "but there's only one person in town right now who knows Kakashi and who Kakashi wouldn't know even by reputation. I'll assign it to her as a mission, so at least she's getting paid for it, but…"  
  
Sakura wasn't going to be happy about this. Not even remotely.  
  
For that matter, Tsunade wasn't very happy about it herself. "Keep him here for the day, just in case Yamanaka wants to ask him something. Tomorrow, send him to me."


	2. Once Bitten

"Kill me," Sakura says, breezing into the flower shop and ignoring the startled looks the civilians give her at that. "I mean it," she says, "the quicker the better."  
  
Ino blinks at her, looking up from where she's wrapping flowers for another woman. "Don't worry about her," Ino tells the woman blithely, "it's a ninja thing. Here's your flowers, Nakamura-san. Thanks for stopping by!"  
  
Nakamura-san gives Sakura a long, dubious look while thanking Ino, and Sakura watches her leave with raised eyebrows. "It's a ninja thing?" she asks archly.  
  
Her best friend scans the shop quickly for anyone who looks like they might need her help—Ino always takes her responsibilities seriously, even if she complains sometimes—before kicking at Sakura's ankle, where the customers wouldn't see it. "Shut it," she says. "Nakamura-san's a sweetie but she's ancient and thinks ninja are from a different world or something. If she doesn't get that, then there's no way she's going to get over-dramatic teenager drama."  
  
"Nice to see you've got my problem pegged before I tell you want it is," Sakura mutters, leaning over to rub her ankle. "Pig."  
  
"Forehead." Ino leans against the counter, looking more like a shop girl than a ninja right then and there. "So why do you want me to kill you? I've got to charge you extra if you wind up bleeding on the begonias." Ino ponders that. "Though our meat-eating varieties would probably appreciate it."  
  
Despite herself, Sakura laughs. She's still in a horrible mood but it's easier to ignore it when Ino is with her and being ridiculous. "You don't have meat-eating begonias," Sakura says and at Ino's look of 'are you sure about that?' laughs again. "No, seriously, you don't."  
  
Ino just shrugs innocently.  
  
"Yamanaka-san?"  
  
"Sorry, Forehead," Ino says, "gotta work. I get off in two hours—meet me then? Unless you want to work…?"  
  
"Sure," Sakura says impulsively. It'll give her something to do. It's worth it, too, for the surprised expression on Ino's face. Ino knows she hates shop work with a passion, having helped out before.   
  
That doesn't stop Ino from directing Sakura over to the till, where they kept spare aprons underneath before Ino drifted off to go and chatter with a customer.  
  
The division of work suits her mood perfectly. Ino is like a butterfly, no customer gets very far into the store without Ino saying a quick hello and a tell me if you need my help and no poisonous plants are not sold to civilians and anything lethal in under thirty seconds requires your ninja ID and thirty-six hours before the order can be released no arguing and if you argue you can take it up with the owner.  
  
It never fails to amuse Sakura that Ino can say all of that with a bright smile without laughing. She knows she can't do it—she's tried. It's _hard_ to say something that's a warning and threat and an offer to help all in one without losing composure.  
  
The two hours pass in a whirlwind of brightly coloured and scented flowers, some that Sakura recognizes and others she doesn't though Ino finds the time to give her an impromptu lesson to two ones she doesn't, and the customers don't blink an eye at finding two girls instead of one minding the shop.  
  
Of the customers, the ninja recognize them both as Genin—the only reason that they're even allowed to sell anything deadly—and the civilians know Ino as the daughter of the owners and Sakura as her friend.  
  
Sakura finds it soothing, though by the time she's done her unplanned for shift, she's also tired. It's only eleven in the morning; Ino had been working the morning shift.  
  
"There," Ino says with satisfaction as her mom comes in and shoos them out. She grins at Sakura as they wander down the street. "Wasn't that a change? And you're not ready to spit nails."  
  
"No," Sakura replies, "it's a miracle."  
  
"It might be," Ino laughs.   
  
They walk in comfortable silence for a few moments before Sakura sighs. This, Ino takes as permission to pry. (Which, to be fair, Sakura admits, it kinda is.)   
  
"So," Ino says, "what's got you unhappy-like? Your sensei? Or is this a new and untried unhappy thing?"  
  
"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura says moodily, " _and_ a new and untried thing."  
  
Ino pauses, clearly trying to work that out. Sakura watches the rapid-fire expression on her friend's face and tries to guess what she'll come up with. It won't be reality, Sakura mourns, but it'll be interesting.  
  
"Don't tell me they're giving him another team?" Ino asks, sounding appalled. "After the disaster of what happened to you guys?"  
  
Sakura winces. That _would_ hurt, even though she's spent the better part of a month ignoring him. "No," she says quickly, as Ino's face turns stormy. She wouldn't put it past Ino to go raging up to Kakashi-sensei to give him a piece of her mind.  
  
It's funny how much that comforts her even as she tells Ino that, no, that's not it.  
  
"What is it then?" Ino asks. "It can't be _worse_?"  
  
"Let's get a smoothie," Sakura says, dragging Ino down the street.   
  
Half an hour later, smoothies in hand, they're in the park where they first met, sitting on the swings.   
  
Ino fiddles with her straw and then fixes Sakura with a look. "Okay," she says, "now talk."  
  
"I've got a mission," Sakura says moodily. "And it's looking after Kakashi-sensei."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I don't know," she says. "Tsunade-shishou was pretty apologetic about it but she's putting me back with Kakashi-sensei because, apparently, he _doesn't_ remember me."  
  
Ino, mid-way through a slurp of her smoothie chokes as she splutters. " _What?_ " This time, instead of confusion, she has a good bit of outrage in her voice.  
  
"Some jutsu nailed him on a mission." She doesn't look at Ino, who is still muttering vile things under her breath. "It erased his last few years of memory or something. They're still trying to figure it out."  
  
"Well isn't that just _convenient!_ " Ino rages. "He gets to mess with your life, destroy your team, and then some enemy nin gives him a get out of it all card for free?"  
  
Sakura looks down. Toys with her smoothie straw. "Yeah," she says quietly. "That about sums it up."  
  
It doesn't cover the fact that some part of her is upset that he's hurt but it does cover what she feels is the raging injustice of it all quite nicely. Sakura simmers with resentment over it, really, because if one of them had to forget, why couldn't it be her? She's the one that got left behind. He's just the one that screwed it all up.  
  
"I'm going to kill him." Ino kicks up a cloud of dust with one foot. "Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but one day I'm going to kill him. And they're saddling you with him because maybe you'll trigger something?"  
  
"How did you--?"  
  
"Hello," Ino says dryly, "my family specializes in mind-jutsu. That's a pretty basic attempt for triggering memories."  
  
Hope, weird and painful and ugly, blossoms in her chest. "Do you think it'll work?"  
  
Ino looks uncomfortable.  
  
Her hope crumples like a used tissue. "You don't."  
  
"Well," Ino says, like she really wishes she didn't have to, "Sakura, he couldn't be assed to remember you when he _had_ his memories. Why would he remember you without them?"  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi squints at the dossier. There's no real need to, of course, because he's read it twice already and has it memorized, but it gives him something solid to focus on. He stares at the pictures of the Genin who were… _apparently_ … his team.  
  
He cannot imagine what possessed him to pass a team.  
  
He never _wanted_ a team.  
  
But apparently he had one. The future, he decides, is a bizarre place. Assuming this isn't just a genjutsu.  
  
He tells himself that it could still be a genjutsu but as time ticks on by he finds his belief in that assumption challenged more and more. He doesn't believe it now, but it's just tempting to lie to himself. There's limits to what genjutsu can do, especially if they're not backed by a bloodline limit, and by his estimation, they crossed over the limit of reasonable doubt quite a while back.  
  
Which doesn't stop him from wishing a genjutsu was the trouble. It would be infinitely easier to just assume that and then spend his time figuring out how to break it.  
  
If he's really in the future--which so far, seems to be Tsunade's leading theory, though they haven't ruled out him having lost several years of his memories, which definitely doesn't sound right to him because he recognizes himself in a mirror and he hasn't gained any scars and he highly doubts he's become a good enough ninja to avoid all scarring for somewhere in the guess of at least five years, maybe as much as seven…--then he's got a problem.  
  
Several of them.  
  
The most pressing one is that he has no idea how to get back. They killed the ninja that did this to him. He distinctly remembers snapping his neck.   
  
Of course, he thinks wryly, picking up a picture of a blond kid making an atrocious face for the camera, his memories might not be reliable at this point. Who is to say that one is?  
  
He's conflicted on if he even _wants_ that particular one to be reliable. On one hand, the fact he killed the person who might have been able to reverse this is thoroughly distressing. On the other… the fact he killed the person who did this to him is entirely satisfying.  
  
Setting down the picture of the blond kid, whose name makes him wonder what sick joke this is, giving him his sensei's child to look after, he picks up the photo of the other boy. Dark hair, dark eyes, clearly an Uchiha through and through. He's baffled at the thought. Why would _anyone_ put him on a team with an Uchiha after what happened to Obito? The Uchiha Clan had been quite adamant in their disapproval of him having one of Obito's eyes and informed the village the he wasn't to be sent on missions with any of their Clan.  
  
When had that changed?  
  
The third picture is that of a pink-haired girl. She's smiling at the camera, making it look more like a school photo than a picture meant for a ninja's ID. He doesn't recognize her as being from any existing clan but that's not entirely a negative. It means she's got less training to fall back on but it also means she doesn't have any familial bad habits trained into her.  
  
Setting her picture down, he wonders at the scarcity of information in the dossier. There are the basic stats of each Genin along with their mission records and a few notes, only a few words long for each of them, in what look suspiciously like his own hand, about each of their abilities.  
  
If this is all the information that Tsunade-sama gives him, it makes him wonder what is missing. He can see that they've all been ninja for about a year. There _should_ be more.   
  
There isn't.  
  
Kakashi tilts his chair back, balancing precariously on the back legs, and considers that with no little amount of dread. Tsunade-sama has already told him that he's being assigned to Haruno, the pink-haired girl, until they can determine what's wrong with his memories. He suspects there's going to be a Yamanaka involved in that and isn't looking forward to it.  
  
More worrisome is the fact that while he's being assigned to look after Haruno, Tsunade-sama made no mentions of Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke being assigned to him as well. What can they do with only half the team?  
  
And why isn't he being placed with all three of the Genin he's supposedly sensei for?  
  
He glances at the clock and knows he'll start getting answers in about an hour.  
  
It's going to be a long hour.  
  
He never was that patient.  
  


* * *

  
  
"I don't want to go and meet him," Sakura says, her smoothie gone and her face stony. "It's going to be _horrible_."  
  
Ino, her rage shelved because Sakura is upset, swings her legs idly. "You've got a few more minutes before you've got to leave," she says comfortingly.  
  
"If I'm late, Tsunade-shishou is going to murder me." Sakura lifts her head. "I am giving serious consideration to that option."  
  
"I'd miss you," Ino tells her. "Don't."  
  
Sakura smiles slightly. "I won't, I guess," she says sighing. "But only because you don't want me to."  
  
"Look on the bright side," Ino tells her. "Which is, I know, ridiculously hard but there is one!"  
  
Tilting her head in thought, Sakura tries to figure out what could possibly be a bright side of Kakashi-sensei not remembering anything that he did to ruin his team. Of the fact that he won't, doesn't, remember the fact that Sasuke left because he chose vengeance over their team, or that Naruto bailed in order to follow a better teacher, or that she did the same, only her teacher couldn't leave Konoha and so, neither could she.  
  
Put that way, she thinks, she envies him for that. Life would be way easier if she could just turn time back enough for none of it to have ever happened.  
  
"I don't know," she says dubiously. "Are you sure there's a bright side?"  
  
"Yes," Ino tells her earnestly. "You're going to go and meet him, right? They're going to hope you trigger his memories, right?"  
  
She nods, still not seeing where Ino is going with… Her eyes widen. "Ino!" she says, shocked.  
  
Ino looks pleased with herself. "I thought it was a good idea."  
  
"It's evil," Sakura tells her.  
  
That earns her a raised eyebrow.  
  
"But good," Sakura concedes. "You think I can get away with that?"  
  
"I think," Ino says, "that they're going to have to give you room enough to see what Kakashi might remember anyway. You might as well take advantage of that."  
  
She squirms a bit. "I want to," Sakura confesses, "but won't he be able to tell I'm lying?"  
  
Ino just shrugs. "What's he going to do?" she asks. "Tell on you? If he's going to be jerk enough to forget everything that happened, then I think you're perfectly justified in taking advantage of it to do a little… creative rewriting of history."  
  
"Naruto and Sasuke are still gone," Sakura points out as she stands and dusts her dress off. "I can't rewrite the story so that changes."  
  
"You don't need to," Ino says, smiling slightly. "In fact, it's better if you don't. Lies always go better if you mix a bit of truth with them, you know? But there's nothing to say you can't change how things went with you, right?"  
  
Sakura frowns as they toss their cups in the trash and start heading for the hospital, where she is supposed to meet Kakashi. "I don't know if I like that," she says. "It just makes things easier for him, doesn't it? If he thinks I was a student he cared about? Then he'll think he wasn't a total failure when he finds out that Naruto and Sasuke both… left."  
  
"Don't think about what's good for him," Ino advises, sounding a lot like her mother for a moment. "Think about what's good for you, Sakura. Would you benefit from rewriting your relationship with him?"  
  
"I'll think about it," Sakura promises. "But I'm not saying I will. It might serve him better if I just drop the whole, ugly, truth on him."  
  
Which was incredibly tempting to her. He could have it and he'd have no idea how to deal with it because she had no idea why Kakashi-sensei had made the decisions he had and suspected that this Kakashi-sensei, with years of memories taken away, might be similarly handicapped in this matter.  
  
"Hokage-sama might not like that," Ino observes.  
  
Sakura deflates. "No," she admits, "she wouldn't. She's already given me the 'go easy on him' lecture. I don't see why I should."  
  
"Me neither," Ino says, "but then, I'm not the leader of a bunch of deadly ninja either. She's got her reasons and I'm sure they make sense to her but, Sakura, he still owes you. Even if he doesn't remember, he still hurt you. I'm not going to say what you should do but--just, seriously, don't let him off the hook too easily."  
  
"That," Sakura says, "I definitely won't do." They stop at the street just before the hospital and look at one another. "Are you going to come with me?"   
  
Ino looks dreadfully tempted before she shakes her head. "No," Ino sighs, "I shouldn't. I'll let you decide what you're doing first and then we can talk about how I'm supposed to react later, okay?"  
  
"How you're supposed to react?"  
  
"Well, yeah, if you're suddenly his favourite student, clearly I can't be going around hating him," Ino points out. "And if you're dropping the harsh truth on him, I can't be friendly, right? Let me know what you decide and I'll tailor my responses to that."  
  
"You'll support me no matter what I pick?" Sakura bites her lip the moment the words are out and wishes that she hadn't sounded quite so pathetic there. Ino doesn't seem to notice, which she's thankful for, because noticing would just make it more embarrassing.   
  
Instead, Ino just takes it seriously, and gives her a look like 'who do you think you're talking to' as she rolls her eyes. "Oh, come on," Ino says, "of course I'll support you. I've never done anything but."  
  
She's running out of time before she's due at the hospital and knows it but Sakura can't resist the urge to criticize that comment. It's so blatantly untrue that it leaves her feeling a little like she's been struck. "That's not true," she objects, "you and I, we weren't friends for years. I _dropped_ you."  
  
Ino just smiles at her, not a bright smile that the customers of her parents' store get, but a smile that's harder, that glitters around the edges with emotion that Sakura doesn't understand. "I didn't drop you," Ino says. "But we'll talk about that later, if you insist."  
  
"You make no sense," Sakura accuses.   
  
"Sure I do." Ino laughs. "To myself. That's the most important person to make sense for, I think." Ino reaches out and gives her a shove. It's not a very gentle shove. "Go, Sakura," Ino says. "You're going to be late.  
  
"We're talking later," Sakura says, half a threat and half a promise.  
  
Ino just waves her off with a roll of her eyes and a grin and Sakura is left to hurry to the hospital.


	3. Twice Shy

Kakashi isn't sure _why_ he's been moved to the hospital, though he knows they've taken blood and have run a couple of scans on his brain in the ANBU compound already. He supposes he should be grateful they left him his clothing and didn't insist he get into a hospital gown or anything like that.  
  
Tsunade-sama is studying a clipboard with medical jargon on it and making notes. Kakashi stares out the tiny window and ponders the various ways he could make his escape.  
  
Of course, there's the problem that even if he gets out of the hospital without Tsunade-sama noticing, he has no idea where he can go. If everyone in this strange world believes he's the one out of sync, things are naturally going to be different.   
  
He's not even sure where he _lives_ in this world. Back home, he lives on the ANBU compound, like all the other full-time ANBU without families who might complain about their lack of presence. Kakashi squashes the hurt that comes at the thought of families with ease. He's been doing it for years, after all.  
  
It would be nice, however, if he could go to the stone. Tell his family about the predicament he's found himself in. See if they have any advice, even though he cannot hear them even if they do. He finds the ritual of it comforting.  
  
A glance at Tsunade-sama tells him that he's going to have to wait. Haruno should be here any minute now—she's not late yet, but time is getting close, and while he's the last person to criticize anyone for being late for anything but a life or death situation, he doubts that the Hokage's protégé would do something that careless.  
  
Kakashi tries to decide how he feels about having a Genin of his own.  
  
He's pretty sure it's a dreadful idea. He can't even keep a plant alive in his cramped room in the ANBU compound, though Gai keeps trying to help him. How is he supposed to look after a Genin?  
  
Especially, he thinks, with a pang for Rin, a medically inclined Genin who has a teacher of her own already for her field. She doesn't _need_ him.  
  
It's unfortunate, he thinks, that Tsunade-sama is determined to try and trigger his memory. Haruno could go her way and he would be quite happy to rejoin the ranks of ANBU and if his memory came back… well, good for it, but he wasn't aware that he was missing anything _now_ and so it didn't really matter as far as he was concerned.  
  
A knock on the door and the feel of an unfamiliar chakra presence outside it, got his attention. "Come in, Sakura," Tsunade-sama says without looking up from her clipboard. "You're on time, good."  
  
The door opens and the pink-haired girl from the photos steps in. Kakashi studies her covertly as she shuts the door and thinks that the photos didn't do her justice. Her hair was not _nearly_ as bright in them as it was in real life and her eyes are greener. They flicker over him with a myriad of emotions before settling into carefully closed off neutrality.   
  
"Tsunade-shishou," the girl says respectfully.  
  
Kakashi wonders how bad a teacher he must be that she does not look his way even once with a smidgen of gladness. Somehow, he feels that he's been vindicated. Hasn't he been failing teams relentlessly, harshly with the deliberate attempt to get out of teaching?  
  
It's weird to feel uncertain about how to react when he can tell that he clearly has lived up to his estimation of his own abilities as a teacher.   
  
"Sakura," Tsunade-sama says, "while I've assigned you to Hatake Kakashi, you're to report to me for training every day—the exact times will be worked out once you and your sensei have figured out a routine."  
  
He can't see Haruno's face and her back is straight and unreadable. Kakashi is left to imagine her expression as she bows her head and agrees.  
  
"Right," Tsunade-sama says as she hands Sakura a set of keys, "Hatake, you're free to leave the hospital. Sakura knows where your apartment is, she'll show it to you. You both know the parameters of the mission."  
  
"Tsunade-shishou," Sakura says, "will we be sent on other missions while--?"  
  
"Give it a few days in village and I'll review the idea," Tsunade-sama says briskly but with a bit of a smile for the girl. She clearly likes her protégé, Kakashi thinks, and wonders if he'd done the same. "Any further questions?"  
  
He shakes his head as Haruno murmurs a negative. Tsunade-sama rests one hand on Haruno's shoulder for a moment before pulling away. "I've got other duties. I'll expect to see you tomorrow, Sakura. Don't be late."  
  
"I'm never late," Haruno says indignantly, which makes Tsunade-sama laugh as she leaves the room.  
  
Awkward silence falls almost immediately. He doesn't know about Haruno but Kakashi is back to calculating ways of escape, no matter how nonsensical it might be to dream of. He stares out the window, figuring it's his best bet, and wonders if Tsunade-sama has placed teleportation and transportation jutsu wards around the hospital.   
  
Probably a safe thing to believe, he decides, a bit wary of trying when everything is so out of sync.  
  
Haruno sighs.   
  
He turns to look at her as she visibly steels herself. What has she been told about his situation? He curses himself for not having thought to ask previous to this.   
  
"Kakashi-sensei," she says, "come on, I'll show you where you live."  
  
Then she turns and heads for the door of the room. That's it. As far as omens go, it hardly seems like a good one.  
  
Kakashi stares after her for a moment and then, slowly, gets up to follow.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Sakura resists the urge to run. Barely.  
  
It was all very well for her to talk with _Ino_ about how she'll treat Kakashi-sensei. It's turning out to be an entirely different thing for her to figure out how she wants to be treated by him and how she wants to treat him now that she's actually forced to deal with him.  
  
It's really, really unfair, she thinks, that he doesn't remember anything.  
  
"What year is it, according to your memories?" she asks without looking at him as she makes her way down the halls of the hospital.  
  
He tells her and she's glad she's in front of him because Sakura's a pretty poor liar as it is and she can't stop the grimace from passing her face.  
  
God, he hasn't even lived through the Uchiha Massacre yet.  
  
What is _she_ supposed to tell him?  
  
Is this a test? she wonders. Does Tsunade-shishou want to find out how she can deal with a situation like this? Sakura has no intention of failing any test set by her new sensei but it would be nice to know for sure.  
  
Sakura doesn't know what to say to him so she's silent as they walk, taking to the rooftops as soon as they get out of the hospital, she leads him to his apartment. She's only been here twice and both times were because he had been more than four hours late to training and she was sick of waiting.  
  
This time, it's weird to be coming here with Kakashi-sensei.  
  
"This is your building," she says and Kakashi-sensei looks up, evaluating it.   
  
It looks like a pretty normal building to her. Not a super nice apartment, like Hinata says that Kurenai-sensei has, but it's not in a bad area and it's not in a horrible state of disrepair.  
  
"Strong wards," Kakashi-sensei says approvingly, with a nod.  
  
She looks at him and then frowns at the building. She doesn't sense anything from it. Is this another thing she should have been taught and wasn't? Sakura makes note to ask Ino, whose sensei might laze about with her team more often than Ino likes, but who nonetheless makes an effort to train all three of them. Ino also has a Jounin for a father.  
  
Sakura mourns the fact that she can't say the same. It's hard to always be finding things she should know but doesn't because of her background.  
  
"Come on," she says.  
  
They enter the building together. There's no elevator, which Kakashi-sensei notices with another approving nod, and she scowls at as they head for the stairs and head up.   
  
"This one is yours," Sakura says, stopping outside a door that looks much like every other one they've passed.  
  
He studies the door intently, frowning slightly--she can just barely tell through his mask--as he obviously judges his own security. Sakura waits, not sure she should try and rush him when he's busy and this is all new to him.  
  
She does hope he doesn't make them stand out here for a while though.  
  
Eventually he nods and looks at her, clearly waiting for her to open the door, as if he hasn't been the one making her wait all this time.   
  
His keys rattle in her hand. There's several there and she's not sure what they're all for but at least the wait time has given her the chance to figure out which one is meant for his apartment. So she thinks, anyway. When the key slides smoothly into the lock and turns just as easily, a soft click telling her the door is unlocked, Sakura smiles slightly at her triumph.  
  
It's a tiny thing, but it makes her feel better.  
  
She pushes the door open and then, feeling awkward, steps back and gestures for him to go first. It _is_ his home, she tells herself, it makes sense that he'd enter first.  
  
He does.  
  
Kakashi moves slowly and cautiously, like he's entering enemy territory, and Sakura is careful to hang back out of reach, just in case something spooks him. Of course, with a ninja of his ability, being truly out of reach would require her being at least on the other side of the village, but Tsunade-shishou would not accept that as an excuse so she stays put, just inside the door, which she shuts behind her.  
  
Watching him explore his own place, Sakura wonders what he thinks. It's the plainest apartment she's ever been in. All the furniture is practical and utilitarian and, well, _boring_. She trails behind him as he enters the kitchen and starts looking through drawers.  
  
He stares down into a drawer, then looks at her. "I cook?"  
  
Sakura shrugs, a bit surprised. Kakashi never struck her as the sort. Clearly, he'd never struck _himself_ as the sort. "That's news to me."  
  
He frowns and shuts the drawer and moves on. Watching him explore the bathroom is more interesting than she would ever have guessed. He studies every bottle, every item intensely, and seems to get more information from them than she does. When she looks at the same things, she sees shampoo and conditioner (Kakashi-sensei conditions! She'll have to tell Ino) and things like deodorant that everyone has.  
  
When he treats these things like they might go off in his face, she wonders just how many things he's got trapped in his apartment and makes note not to touch anything. Just in case.  
  
His bedroom, she lets him explore on his own. It's beyond awkward to think of going in there with him and he says nothing when she hangs behind and wanders back to the living room and sits, gingerly, on the couch after checking it for traps. She doesn't find any traps but does find a few kunai stuck under the cushions and a garrote wire tucked inside the cushion, just where the zipper is.  
  
Sakura leaves them where she finds them and wonders if she'll ever be as paranoid as he, clearly, is.  
  
Who puts a garrote wire in their couch cushions? Just in case? Who?  
  
And if that's in the couch, just the cushion she's sitting on, how much more is hidden around the room? Sakura eyes the room and tries to guess as she waits for Kakashi-sensei to finish exploring his apartment.  
  
When he comes out, he looks mildly impressed with himself and satisfied. Sakura decides not to ask him about it--if she had to guess, she'd say he was pleased with his own paranoia.  
  
"Haruno," he says, when he sees her sitting on the couch, precisely on one cushion, and not leaning back against it, just in case. "Where is the rest of… the team?"  
  
"Your team," Sakura corrects before she can stop herself. "Team Seven."  
  
He watches her.  
  
"They're gone," she says flatly. "Training."  
  
"And you?"  
  
"Training," she tells him, "without the gone part."  
  
His face twitches, for a moment like he's almost going to laugh, before it clears up again. "Look," he says, "you're supposed to be helping me."  
  
 _But I don't want to._ She glowers at her hands and when she can control the urge to glower at him, she looks back up. "I am helping you," she says. "I brought you here, didn't I? Like Tsunade-shishou said."  
  
"That's called 'following orders'," he points out dryly.  
  
Sakura shrugs a little. "I don't know what you want from me," she says honestly. "I'd rather be training with Tsunade-shishou right now."  
  
He grimaces at her.  
  
She resists the urge to grimace back.  
  
 _Well, Ino_ , she thinks, _he's never going to believe I was his favourite student now._  
  
It's almost too bad, but her acting skills just wouldn't have been up to it. She never was that great at it in the kunoichi-only classes. Too much of her real feelings always shone through.   
  
Kakashi leans back in his chair and fixes her with an unreadable look. "So I'm that bad of a teacher, huh?"  
  
Sakura hesitates.  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi watches her hesitate and weighs the odds of her telling the truth. He already knows and he suspects that she knows he does, which makes things simpler and a lot more likely that—  
  
"Yeah," Haruno says, her voice flat, her eyes clearly saying she wants to be anywhere but here, "yeah you were."  
  
Vindication would be sweeter if it wasn't for the knowledge that whatever fuck ups future him had done were his to clean up now. Kakashi resents that, more than a little, since from Tsunade-sama's assigning Haruno to him, it's clear he's _meant_ to fix this.   
  
He's never wanted to be a teacher. Ever.   
  
He nods slowly and leans forward to rest his elbows on his legs. "Tell me what I did." It’s not a question.  
  
Her eyes narrow at him; she picked up on that.  
  
"What I don’t understand," Kakashi says, "is why they gave me—" it’s his turn to hesitate, realizing that he’s not sure how much Haruno knows about the Kyuubi and about Naruto’s peculiar relationship with the village, "—an Uchiha."  
  
Her eyes remain narrowed. Her mouth a thin line. He isn't sure if she can tell he changed his mind at the last moment, about which Genin to ask about, or not. It doesn't really matter.  
  
"Given my history," he says, and her eyes flicker to his covered eye, "the Clan is unlikely to have agreed to that."  
  
"Hokage-sama did what he wanted," she says, her voice tight. Kakashi isn't certain of what has made her tense up—perhaps she's had a bad encounter with the police force? Well, she wouldn't be the first Genin to have that happen to… She continues with, "I was unaware clans had any say in what teams their children were placed on."  
  
"No, you wouldn’t. You’re a first generation ninja, aren’t you?"  
  
"Yes," she says defiantly.   
  
He nods slowly. "All parents are informed of their children’s teammates at graduation. Shinobi Clans have their legal loopholes to force a team change if they do not agree. Balancing each team of Genin is a tricky act."  
  
Haruno looks like she’s swallowed a lemon. "Civilian parents do not have the same loopholes, do they?"  
  
"They’ve one," he tells her.  
  
"Pull their kid from the school, right?"   
  
"Yes."  
  
She nods like that makes sense to her. He wonders if she’d fought with her parents over her team assignment or if her parents hadn’t known. If they’d come to Konoha after… after the attack, which was possible, even with a baby, then no one would have been likely to enlighten them.  
  
"So why did I get placed with an Uchiha?" Kakashi can make his own guesses about why he was given Uzumaki. His sensei's child. And Haruno as a civilian would have been placed on his team as the third because it would cause no fuss amongst the Clans.   
  
Indeed, when they were assigning the teams he expects that they were relieved to have such an easy solution. First generation shinobi rarely, if ever, raised a fuss about their team assignments. They were too busy working their asses off to make sure they could make the cut, since it was an uphill climb against their contemporaries with Clan backing.  
  
Haruno's face tightens and she stands. "I want to show you something," she says, "and I think you'll understand why when you see it."  
  
It's not really an invitation. He could demand that she tell him here. Looking at her face, though, Kakashi knows she's already disinclined to like him. That she doesn't trust him. That somewhere along the line the other him, the one that should be here, fucked up monumentally.   
  
Pushing the matter here wouldn't solve anything and might make it harder for him and Haruno to work together for as long as Tsunade-sama feels they should. Kakashi has worked with teammates who don't like him before.   
  
The key is compromise. It costs him nothing to go with her—and it'll allow him to see more of the village and figure out what has changed and what has stayed the same.   
  
He's not opposed to that and stands, slowly, so that she doesn't get jittery around him.  
  
"Lead the way," he tells her.  
  
Surprise flashes across her face—had she expected him to refuse?—and she nods. "Come on."


	4. The definition of insanity is...

She leads him to the Uchiha district.  
  
Before they ever enter it, he can tell there's something wrong. The paint has faded and the gates are shut. Sakura doesn't stop, just turns sideways and wriggles through the gaps between the wooden slats, with the ease of long practice.  
  
Kakashi winces at the thought of doing the same. There were some things that had been easier when he'd been younger, even if there are upsides to being older. Instead he forms a few seals and reappears on the other side of the gate.  
  
He looks around and realizes they're in a ghost town.  
  
Shutters creak and hang off their hinges. Silence has an almost physical weight to it. On once brightly-coloured signs there's dirt and grit and everything has faded from the sun.  
  
"Welcome," Sakura says, with a twisted grimace, "to the Uchiha District."  
  
She starts walking purposefully down the eerily empty street--eerie for him, because two days ago, this was a bustling, thriving community, but for her, it's clearly been this empty for years--and he follows, horrified, wondering what happened to reduce a Clan of the Uchiha's strength to this.  
  
What enemy could do such a thing?  
  
"Why was I given an Uchiha to train?" he asks again. This time, he thinks he knows the answer.  
  
"You're the only one that could," she says, without looking back. "No one else has the Sharingan in the village."  
  
He thinks about all the people he knows, even just on sight, who have it and shudders inwardly. "What about Konoha's Military Police?"  
  
"Disbanded."  
  
Kakashi stops abruptly. Haruno keeps going for a few steps before turning back to look at him inquiringly.   
  
He's… pretty aghast, to be honest. "You can't just _disband_ the internal police force."  
  
"Most of the force was Uchiha," Haruno points out, like she's reciting a history lesson and he has the uncomfortable feeling that she _is_. "After the Uchiha Massacre," he can hear the caps in that, "the Sandaime Hokage did not have the personnel, or the volunteers, to staff it. Those who were members but non-Uchiha were absorbed into the general forces, a portion of which was then given the mission of regulating the village."  
  
"A portion," Kakashi says blankly, then takes a few steps to keep up with Haruno who has started walking again. His long stride eats the distance between them easily. "How can we afford that?"  
  
Haruno gives a bit of a shrug. "I don't know about the expense side," she says, "but it's been working fairly well from what I can tell."  
  
"With all your vast experience?"  
  
She ignores that.  
  
On reflection, Kakashi thinks, she's probably right to. "Where are we going?"  
  
"To Sasuke's apartment," she says, which horrifies him all the more.  
  
"He lived here even after--"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"But why wasn't he placed with…" he falters as he realizes that he's unsure who the child could've been placed with. Another Clan wouldn't've been able to raise him--there are too many strictures and familial secrets and skills for any Clan to feel comfortable about taking in another Clan's child. And a civilian family would be unprepared for the trauma that he'd undergone.   
  
He can just imagine the political quagmire it would've caused to try and find the child a shinobi family that wasn't a clan but that the clans approved of to _raise_ a Clan child.  
  
But to just leave him alone…?  
  
Surely a better solution could have been found.  
  
"It's funny," she says, "that you say that. No one said that about Naruto."  
  
A pit of ice settles in his stomach, along with churning guilt. He's not sure what she knows but it's clear that she knows _something_. "He was provided for."  
  
He had been, right?   
  
Truthfully, Kakashi had put as much distance between himself and his sensei's child as possible in an attempt to forget what had happened and never bothered to think about what the child's life would be like. He'd just wanted to forget.  
  
Watching the narrow shoulders of his third Genin, Kakashi finds himself without anything to say in his defense as she snorts her disbelief.   
  
"This," she says, stopping outside an imposing looking apartment block, "this Sasuke's place."  
  
He surveys it. It looks just as broken down as the rest of the district, dusty and dirty. He tries to imagine living in the silence of this place and cannot.  
  
Kakashi knows what a silent house feels like, he remembers that clearly.  
  
He also remembers having his team around him, from a very young age. Uchiha Sasuke, he knows, did not make Genin at six, the way he did.  
  
Very few did.  
  
"Are we going in?" he asks.  
  
Haruno stares up at the building. "If you want to," she says and doesn't move.  
  
"Who killed the Uchiha?"  
  
Her green eyes are as cold as stone when she looks at him. In a few years, he thinks, she'll be formidable. Not yet, but it will happen. "An Uchiha."  
  
Kakashi stares up at the apartment. "And left Sasuke alive."  
  
She makes a noise of dismay in the back of her throat. "He wants Sasuke to kill him," she says, "and to do that, Sasuke feels he must live with hatred only. He's gone from the village."  
  
He hears what she doesn't say: _Team Seven failed_. They hadn't been enough of a family to keep Uchiha Sasuke grounded and protected and a part of the village. Haruno, quite clearly, blames him.  
  
Does his older self, the one with all his memories, blame himself?  
  
"Who killed the Uchiha, Haruno?"  
  
"Uchiha Itachi."  
  


* * *

  
  
Sakura wraps her arms around her waist as they walk through the abandoned sector, Kakashi-sensei's silence a compliment to her own. After she'd told him about Uchiha Itachi he'd fallen silent. She peers at him, knowing he'll notice, but hoping he won't take her to task for her lack of subtlety, as she gauges the depth of his frown.  
  
… It's a pretty big frown, she decides.   
  
She hasn't tried too hard to get him to talk. It's weird enough that she's wandering around here with her first sensei, already without adding extra strangeness.  
  
The Kakashi-sensei that she and Ino had been imagining had been like her lazy, always late sensei only without the last year.   
  
This Kakashi-sensei is different, more focused. When he asks her a question, she knows he expects a serious answer because there's none of the other Kakashi-sensei's bland amusement at life in his tone.  
  
This Kakashi-sensei is all business.  
  
Sakura likes this one better, she decides.  
  
"Where did Uzumaki Naruto go?" Kakashi-sensei asks, breaking the silence. "And why?"  
  
"Jiraiya-sama took him as his student," Sakura answers. "He wanted training to become strong enough to go after Sasuke and bring him back. He promised."  
  
Already she feels guilty for that promise. Like she's swallowed a live goldfish.  
  
Sakura says nothing about the fact that some people are after Naruto. It doesn't really matter now, not when he's safe, away with Jiraiya-sama. Even Tsunade-shishou believes that Naruto is safer this way.  
  
"And you chose Tsunade-sama to study with."  
  
"The training," she says, "was better."  
  
He's silent for a few moments. "Tell me about Team Seven."  
  
Wind tugs at her hair, tied back with her hitae-ite, and Sakura seriously gives thought to not answering him at all. It's an ugly can of worms and she doesn't want to relive it. If she could, she'd go back and erase it from _her_ mind.  
  
In the end, though, she tells him because this Kakashi-sensei is different from the one she knows and if she doesn't tell him, someone else will.  
  
At least this way, he'll know what it was like to be on the team.  
  
At least this way, she'll finally get to tell _her_ side to it all and be _listened_ to.  
  
Sakura likes this strange, different Kakashi-sensei even more for that.  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi lays back on his bed, in his room, in his apartment—none of which he'd been aware of owning before the morning—and tries to think. Haruno has gone home, wrung out and tired and grumpy, with a promise to pick him up bright and early tomorrow morning.  
  
He's, truth be told, glad she's gone for the night.  
  
He needs _time_ to adjust.   
  
And to try something that's been itching at him for days now, but that he hadn't had the time to try. First, there'd been the mission and he hadn't the time or the chakra to spend on trying to summon his dogs. Then there'd been the return to the village, ANBU, Tsunade, the hospital, Yamanaka Inoichi poking around in his mind…  
  
He hadn't been left alone long enough to feel up to trying to summon his dogs. He desperately wants their comfort and this, all alone in a place that smells almost familiar but isn't his and isn't known, he finally has the time.  
  
Kakashi tries not to get his hopes up.   
  
Leaving his bedroom, he takes a cautious seat on his couch, and after a second's hesitation (he tells himself not to be a ninny) and bites his thumb and runs through a familiar set of seals, molding the chakra with the ease of long practice.   
  
For a moment, all goes well, and he thinks it might actually work—and then the chakra slams up against what he can only envision is a wall, sloshes back at him, leaving him reeling back into the cushions of his couch, and he's left with a jutsu that he's known for what feels like forever having fizzled and backfired on him.  
  
Kakashi stares grimly at where his dogs should've appeared.   
  
Right. He doesn't know how the jutsu that put him into this position worked but he suddenly wishes he'd taken a little more time to make the offending ninja's death more painful… and lingering.  
  
He clamps down on yearning for his dogs. He doesn't have time to wallow. Especially not if he's got to adjust to their loss as well as… everything else.  
  
(And though it pains him deeply, the loss of his dogs only impacts him. Everything else impacts more people, more savagely.)  
  
Unfortunately, adjusting means dealing with the clusterfuck of a team the Hokage has dropped in his lap, and he's pretty sure there's no way to put the team back together because it's already shattered beyond repair.  
  
Haruno blames him. Uchiha Sasuke isn't spared her blame either and even she even lays some of it on Uzumaki Naruto. Though, admittedly, Uzumaki gets rather less of it. From what she said (and his nose _knows_ she wasn't lying) she's right.  
  
If he takes her word for it, for the year and change another him had control of Team Seven, Kakashi has to agree with her scathing assessment:  
  
He really _didn't_ try to train them. Didn't try to make them a team. Failed them all dismally.  
  
There's worse teachers out there, he can think of a few, but Haruno's pointed and detailed run-down of Team Seven under his command definitely earns him a ranking position on that list.  
  
Which is uncomfortable.  
  
More than that, it's nearly impossible to comprehend. Kakashi looks at his hands. They look like his hands still, the ones he woke up with that morning. The ones he'd woken up with last week.  
  
They're not the hands that failed to steer properly. He's the wrong Kakashi. This is some bizarre, messed up future that he wants out of. How the hell did he mess up responsibility so badly?  
  
Teaching—especially Genin, who are breakable and fragile and naïve and think they aren't any of that---isn't something he sees himself doing, if he's honest with himself. In _his_ timeline, he's not a teacher.  
  
He kills things. Saves things, sometimes. But mostly he kills things while wearing the black and white and scarlet spiral of ANBU.   
  
Kakashi closes his eyes and rubs at his face. In this world (the future, supposedly) he's a Genin sensei. A really _awful_ Genin sensei.   
  
He wonders what Tsunade-sama (who is Hokage now, which hurts his head to think about too hard; the Sandaime took over and Haruno mentioned he'd died but…) was thinking, to place him in the hands of someone who held a grudge.  
  
Was it punishment?  
  
Was it encouragement to do better?   
  
_Could_ he do better? That's the million ryo question and he _knows_ the answer to it.  
  
"Yes," he says, letting the word come out as a sigh.   
  
He knows _how_ to be a good sensei. Minato-sensei had been one of the best and everything his sensei had done, he remembers. He can apply the lessons learnt there to a team. It's one of the ways he gets through being an ANBU captain and leading missions there.  
  
Clearly, in this future, he hadn't bothered to put forth the effort when it came to a bunch of Genin who needed him. It's an ugly realization.  
  
 _I don't want to teach,_ he thinks, and that's true.  
  
Kakashi wonders if that was his older-self's justification for fucking up the lives of three children who'd depended on him for guidance. That's ugly. Worse than ugly, it's criminal. Can he hate himself for actions he hasn't even done yet?  
  
(He suspects the answer is yes.)  
  
A knock on his door, his front door, not one of the… alternative entrances, gets his attention. It's less a knock and more of a steady pounding and the chakra signature isn't one he recognizes. It's not Haruno's, though from the training level, it's probably one of her contemporaries.  
  
Kakashi drags himself off the couch to go an answer it.   
  
He suspects, with some dread, that the person on the other side of the door (who is trying to break the door down) is the person who is the biggest reason that Haruno is not a worse mess than she is.  
  
He's read Haruno's file, and her records, and after talking to her all day has a grasp of her personality.   
  
Tsunade-sama is an excellent teacher but even she could not possibly have shored up the wreck the past year should have, would have, made of Haruno's self-esteem and confidence in herself. That would have had to come from a friend.  
  
When he opens the door to find a tall-for-her-age kunoichi with blonde hair and fierce blue eyes staring up at him, he knows he's right. _Yamanaka,_ he notes, with an inward shudder. _As a Clan, they're known for being relentless once their attention is engaged._  
  
"I'm coming in," she tells him, clearly uncaring of the difference in age, that people will talk, that he's apparently a Jounin sensei while she's only a Genin, that she's not even one of _his_ Genin, and that all of the above _matters_ in the village.   
  
Kakashi strongly suspects that whomever her sensei is will be showing up within the hour, thanks to the gossip tree of Konoha. Either that or her parents. Unless she's here with parental approval, which is a frightening thought.  
  
He lets her in anyway, and considers it to be his own way of making amends towards Haruno. If he's going to do anything to fix what his other, older-self wrought then he needs to understand what he's dealing with.  
  
"Name?" he asks, as his security jutsu hum to life around the apartment and he sinks into a chair that is booby-trapped enough that even he feels secure in it.  
  
The Yamanaka girl, with her hands planted on her hips, looks at him. Dirtily. "Yamanaka Ino," she says. "Haruno Sakura is _mine_."  
  
He nods. He remembers her father (it must be her father, she's got Inoichi's eyebrows and scowl, though not his nose), saying something similar years back. "Before you start yelling," Kakashi says mildly, "I feel the need to point out that while I'm Hatake Kakashi, I'm not the Hatake Kakashi that you're pissed off at."  
  
"Then you'll learn from his mistakes." Her voice is like the crack of a whip. It'd be impressive on anyone. On her, with her dainty features, he finds it entirely disturbing.   
  
When the Yamanaka girl leaves three hours later, Kakashi's head hurts worse than it had when she'd shown up. No one else came knocking on his door, so now he's forced to assume that the girl had obtained parental permission (which has always seemed a bit silly to him, when she's technically an adult the moment she puts on her hitae-ite but he doesn't make the rules--he only follows them) before coming to give him the rundown.  
  
She leaves with a smile that's lined with ice and sky blue eyes that burn and he thinks he understands a lot better what she meant when she'd stated that Sakura was _hers_.  
  
Kakashi rubs his face then gets up and makes himself a coffee. It's a stupid thing to drink when he's got to be awake in a few hours, at most, and he thinks he's going to be pulling an all-nighter this time around. He needs the time to think before Sakura inflicts herself on him again.  
  
What is he going to do?  
  
The information, too much information, is jumbled around in his head and for a moment he wishes he were back in his time, back where things made sense and no one had lost their mind and made him a sensei of _anything_ except, perhaps, how to murder people more efficiently while wearing the black and white of ANBU.  
  
His coffee scalds his tongue and he grimaces.   
  
He doesn't know how to fix this. He doesn't understand why he would have turned out to be such a bad sensei. Kakashi knows he doesn't _want_ to teach but he's done a lot of things over the years that he hasn't wanted to do and he's done them well.  
  
What the hell went wrong with him between his timeline and the one he's found himself in?  
  
Is the other Kakashi, the right Kakashi for this timeline (though he's done everything wrong) back in his time? Kakashi thinks about that and decides, all things considered, that he would rather be in this time, in this situation, than in the other him's position.   
  
ANBU headquarters is a bad place to be disoriented.  
  
That's getting off the important things though. He admits that it's a stalling tactic. If he dedicates himself to fixing this, he's not sure he can also dedicate himself to finding a way to go, well, home.   
  
Kakashi thinks about Sakura's green eyes, half-hurt, half-vicious, as she told him about what he'd done to train his team. He thinks about the Yamanaka girl who is all confidence and sparkling, strident determination to make things better for Sakura.  
  
He thinks about the last Uchiha, Sasuke, who he failed so badly that he left the village.  
  
He thinks about Uzumaki Naruto, who he's failed more times over this time around, and who has left the village as well.  
  
Sakura is the only one he can make things better for. She's the only one in his reach right now.  
  
Kakashi wonders, again, what the other him had been thinking.  
  
As his coffee grows cold, he doesn't find an answer, and the lonely night offers no ideas either.  
  
Well, shit.


	5. One Step Forward

The Memorial Stone is the most solidly reassuring thing he's found in this new time.   
  
Kakashi had brooded until he'd realized that no one had said he _couldn't_ go out and, well, the middle of the night isn't enough to stop him from going to visit his family.  
  
The stone is a little older, a little grimmer, and there's a distressing number of names that have been added to it in the years that, however it happened, he's never lived, but it still feels like coming home in a way his apartment hadn't.  
  
That probably means his problems have problems but he doesn't care. Kakashi doesn't talk aloud to his family, though as he stands there visiting, he does tell them all about what the other him ( _their_ him?) has done, what he's found himself in, and about the loss of his dogs.  
  
He's a (more than) competent ninja without them but that's not the _point_. If he's to be stuck in a different time (genjutsu?) with a team of children (well, one, but also not the point) where nothing is quite familiar enough to him—then he wants his dogs.  
  
His family listens to him, which is more of a comfort than anything else has been.  
  
When he leaves the stone, dawn is kissing the horizon and making it blush pinks, golds, and oranges. The beauty of it is wasted on him but, despite his lack of sleep, he feels better. Steadier.   
  
While he doesn't know what to do about his dogs yet, he _does_ know what to do about Haruno.  
  
It isn't everything he wants. But it's a start. He'll figure out the rest later.  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi is on his second cup of coffee when Sakura knocks on his door, once, twice. He opens the door (a bit jittery from the caffeine and lack of sleep) before she can knock a third time.   
  
She immediately lowers her hand, looking flustered and bites her lip.   
  
"Come on in," he says, stepping back to let her do that. After a split-second of consideration, he waves her in and heads down the hallway himself, expecting her to follow him.  
  
She does, after a moment, shutting and locking the door behind her, though what she murmurs under her breath as she does so… well, he probably isn't supposed to hear.  
  
He isn't quite sure what to make of it either.  
  
It's a complicated feeling being preferred by someone over your other self.  
  
Kakashi shoves the urge for more introspection (all of it uncomfortable) away and looks at Haruno’s hopeful but wary face as she takes a seat on his couch. He’s got to tread carefully here. It bothers him that another him made such a mess of this.  
  
He _wants_ to fix it.   
  
Not to prove that he can be a better teacher, though he can, but because Haruno is a Genin who needs a teacher and who, despite all her anger at the other him, _still_ views him as that teacher even though Tsunade-sama has all but taken over that role. She wants _him_ to be her sensei.  
  
His feelings on that are decidedly mixed—in this world he’s not fit to care for his dogs, much less a Genin as far as Kakashi is concerned—but his feelings don’t really matter when compared to the look in his (his!) last remaining student’s eyes.   
  
If he fucks this up he'll never forgive himself.  
  
"Do you have an itinerary for the day?" he asks her.  
  
She shakes her head. "No," Haruno says. "I’m supposed to answer any questions you might have and remain in your presence in order to field other peoples’ questions but… no."  
  
Perfect.  
  
He smiles, knowing it’s visible through the mask. She seems just as discomforted by that as by anything else he’s done. "Let’s go find a training field then," Kakashi says, "and we'll see what you can do."  
  
Her eyes stare up at him, wide and startled, like a wild rabbit, like he's spoken in some alien, incomprehensible tongue.  
  
Kakashi discovers he can hate himself, his other self, a little more. "Come on," he says, keeping the loathing out of his voice with an effort. She'd take it personally when it's all directed at himself. What the hell had his other self been doing that she was so startled by this?  
  
He knows the answer: nothing.  
  
"What I can do?" she asks as he shoos her out of his apartment and locks the door and the ward jutsu up tightly. "You want to know that?"  
  
"Of course," Kakashi says patiently as they head for the stairs. "Otherwise, how am I supposed to be a proper sensei if I don't even know what my student can do?"  
  
Haruno doesn't have an answer for this. He suspects she's too startled with an unusual concept (a sensei who cares!) for her to find a response.  
  
It's going to be a long day.  
  


* * *

  
  
The sun beats down on them, hot and uncomfortable and making the dust and sweat they're both breathing in to be dreadfully uncomfortable.  
  
More uncomfortable for Haruno than for him, Kakashi admits. Most of the sweat is hers. He's glad for the glare of the sun. It means his expression is harder to read--even through the mask, some expression bleeds through--and today is one of the days where he wants nothing to show.  
  
Mostly because his heart has sunk somewhere down around his feet and he suspects that he's going to trip on it soon because there's no end to his other self's deficiencies in teaching Haruno. The day has proven to be _ugly_.  
  
Haruno is sub-par.  
  
Worse than that, she's a danger in the field. Her ability to sense enemies is below that of a Genin in his time (he wonders if that's the same across the board--has peace made them weaker?) and the only thing she has to compensate for her weaknesses is unusually fine chakra control and the beginning techniques of a medical ninja. Her foundations are solid; he knows from her records she was an excellent student at the Academy, if physically weak.  
  
The neglect, then, had to have come after.   
  
Kakashi wonders what he's going to tell her. He doesn't want to crush her fragile self-esteem. Despite himself, he likes her--she's a quick learner, she's obedient without being subservient, and even though she has to know she's not putting on a good show, she's giving it her all.  
  
Like she's got something to prove, he realizes, as he parries a kick. The kick uses taijutsu that's more advanced than Haruno's got the foundations for and he suspects, if he asked, that the Yamanaka girl is probably the one that taught it to her. It's a solid, basic kick only a few notches above what is taught in the Academy.  
  
He'd eat his mask if the Yamanaka girl doesn't know it.  
  
He'd eat his hitae-ite if the Yamanaka girl isn't the one that's taught it to Haruno. It would explain both how she knows it and why she's not great at it if she learned it from another Genin.  
  
"All right," he says. "That's enough."  
  
Haruno stops attacking mid-punch and nearly collapses in on herself. Her face is red, her pink hair is in absolute disarray, her clothes are dirty and torn in some places, her chakra levels are very low, and her weapons are scattered around the field.  
  
He looks much the same as he had when they got here.  
  
Kakashi wonders if that's going to upset her. He hopes not. She's a Genin and he's a Jounin who has been in ANBU for the last few years. The difference in their abilities could be explained by that. But… he thinks she's too honest with herself to know that's all it is.  
  
She rests her hands on her knees, breathing hard and not looking at him.  
  
His heart twists inside his chest as he realizes that she knows she's not on a proper level for a Genin--especially not one that's been out of the Academy for more than a year. He's both grateful for that (it means he doesn't have to find a way to soften that blow) and pities her.  
  
Neither of those emotions show. Haruno, he doubts, would take them well.  
  
He takes a moment to organize his thoughts the way Minato-sensei would've done. He has to be truthful but not cruel. This isn't the case of someone slacking off, where cruelty would be warranted.   
  
"Your effort is admirable," he starts with, both because it's true and because he wants her to know that he values that. She might be below where she should be but he sees nothing of a slacker in her. Haruno is trying her flat-out best to keep from being left behind. "Your chakra control is formidable for someone your age."  
  
Another thing that's true.  
  
"Your taijutsu need work," Kakashi settles on, feeling it's better than bluntly stating that she'd get herself killed in the field if she went out there so ill-prepared. "Your weapons skills need improvement as well and your jutsu repertoire requires expansion."  
  
Haruno pulls herself upright, looking grim and resigned. It's clear that she thinks he's going to just give up on her again.  
  
Once again, Kakashi is appalled with the actions of his other self. If he could, he'd smack himself around until he saw sense. No matter how little he wants to teach it doesn't change the fact that, once given a responsibility it should be seen through the best he is capable of—just like a mission, any mission.  
  
"Have you any familiarity with genjutsu?" he asks, because while she's learning medical jutsu, he thinks her control is more suited to another field. Or maybe that's just his own bias. He misses Rin. He can't let that get in the way with teaching Haruno.  
  
She looks startled.   
  
He waits patiently for her to work through her surprise at being asked, feeling another fission of self-loathing for another him who _didn't do his job_.  
  
"I know how to break them," she says diffidently, looking down like her answer is in some way unacceptable. "You--the other you, I mean--said I would do well with genjutsu thanks to my control."  
  
"Where did you learn to break them?" Kakashi asks, doubting it was from him, with that reaction.  
  
"I saw another shinobi use it during an attack," Haruno tells him, looking everywhere but at him.  
  
For his part, he's _impressed_. Picking up any jutsu, even one so simple as a kai directed to dispel jutsu on the go is not an easy task.  
  
"Well done," he says and means it. She flushes to the roots of her hair. "Would you be interested in learning more?"  
  
Her eyes shine. "Yes, Kakashi-sensei. Yes!"  
  
Kakashi wonders if Tsunade-sama will be put out with him for stealing her newest student. He figures that, if that happens, it is entirely fair. After all, Haruno was another him's student in the first place. He's just picking up the slack and doing it right this time around.  
  
"Very well. But call me Hatake-sensei, please." His eye curves into a smile. She looks giddy--no, ecstatic to be acknowledged in such a manner as she bubbles that she will remember, definitely. "Tell me what you've learned about medical ninjutsu. Do you have ambitions of being a medical nin?"  
  
Haruno deflates and shuffles her feet.  
  
"Just tell me the truth," he says reassuringly. "No matter how you answer, I won't get mad." This requires more patience than training ANBU rookies but Kakashi feels that makes sense. And, in any case, a lot of this is his own fault.  
  
He can put up with having to grit his teeth and wait to get a straight answer out of her.  
  
"I don't know," Haruno admits. "I like learning and I like Tsunade-sama and I'm good at medical jutsu but…"  
  
"Elaborate, Haruno," he says, keeping the bite out of his words. She needs him to be patient. He can do this.  
  
Another Kakashi should have been the one to do this but he'll do it because it needs to be done.  
  
"I don't know," she says, sounding frustrated. "I can't tell if I like learning it because she pays attention to me or because I like the subject! I know that if I can keep someone alive then, yes, it's good to know but I don't want to spend my life healing people!"  
  
There’s a long pause as Haruno breathes deeply and raggedly, looking like it’s something shameful to have admitted to him. Kakashi doesn’t think so, because he’s never had an inclination to heal anyone, though he knows a few basic jutsu, just to keep himself alive on the field.   
  
Haruno, though, looks like it’s the end of the world.  
  
“Tsunade-sama will not hate you for not loving her specialty as much as she does,” Kakashi tells her calmly.  
  
Haruno looks on the verge of tears. “But she’ll be disappointed in me!”  
  
“She’ll cope,” Kakashi says reassuringly. “There’s very, very few ninja who choose healing as their vocation.”  
  
“But I’m good at it! Shouldn’t I—Shouldn’t I carry on with it, if I’m good at it? I could make a difference.”  
  
"There are many ways to make a difference, Sakura." She looks at him, startled, and he realizes that he’s used her first name.   
  
Kakashi pretends this doesn’t alarm him on a deep level. Is he getting used to this world? Or is it just that he's getting used to dealing with Haruno? He likes her, Kakashi can admit that--it's not just that he feels guilty about what his older-self did, though that's part of it.  
  
But he likes her, as a person, in her own, flawed ways. He wants her to succeed.   
  
"You can make a difference in many ways," Kakashi repeats, this time without using her first name.  
  
She looks tentative but willing to listen, almost hopeful, and he's glad for that. The destruction of her team and the lackluster training she's received haven't broken her spirit.  
  
Kakashi can work with this. He knows he can. He even wants to.  
  
It worries him, though, how she'll react when he leaves. Surely, he'll wind up leaving. The Hokage is looking into ways to send him home already. There's got to be a way to reverse whatever happened.  
  
(What will happen to Sakura then?)  
  
"How?" Sakura asks.  
  
"That depends on what path you take," he says, and gestures with her to come with him. She falls into step with him, as they leave the training grounds, her clothes dirty and her face sweaty and her chakra low. Kakashi looks pristine.  
  
But Sakura looks happy.   
  
"Can you teach me about genjutsu?" Sakura doesn't look at him as she asks this.  
  
"If you want me to," Kakashi says, shelving his thoughts about what might happen if he had to leave--to go back to his own time. "I can definitely teach you a fair bit, though I'm not as good at it as some. I'm primarily a ninjutsu specialist, though I'm well rounded for all of that."  
  
Sakura nods. "Because of your eye."  
  
Obito's eye. "Yes. Because of that."  
  
"Do you think I'd be able to learn to be a ninja like you?" Sakura asks. "Someone who is strong all around?"  
  
"I think," Kakashi says, "that you can become any sort of ninja you want to be, with the proper training."  
  
He means it too.  
  
Sakura seems to understand that because she lights up like a sunrise.   
  


* * *

  
  
Sakura collapses on her bed, hours later, with a whimper of pain. Everything hurts. This Hatake-sensei, is a hard taskmaster.  
  
She sort of loves him for it, even though her body doesn't.  
  
"Ino," she says, without opening her eyes, "can you get me a glass of water and some painkillers?"  
  
There's utter silence in the room and then the soft clink of a glass on her nightstand.   
  
Sakura opens one eye, feeling creaky and old with the movement, and sees Ino standing over her, one hand holding the pills she'd asked for. "You already had that ready," Sakura accuses, forcing herself to sit up and grimacing at the dirt she's spread all over her blanket. "How long have you been lurking in my room?"  
  
Ino grins at her, unrepentant and glorious as always. "Long enough," she says, "I saw you earlier with that man and thought it might be best if I took precautions."  
  
"You were keeping tabs on my thoughts."  
  
"Just enough to see when you'd get home," Ino admits. "And don't give me that look. You _gave_ me permission to practice keeping tabs on your mind."  
  
Sakura takes the pills, swallows them, and downs half her glass of water. "I know," she says, "but it's still weird whenever you actually _do_ it."  
  
"Stop whining," Ino says brightly, making Sakura grimace. "Tell me how your training went."  
  
"Can I shower first?"  
  
"No." Ino plops herself down on the bed, on a patch of blanket that’s clean, and crosses her legs at the ankles. "You don’t even want to stand until the painkillers kick in anyway, so don’t give me that."  
  
"I don’t want to think about training," Sakura says grumpily. "I hurt in places I didn’t know it was possible to hurt."  
  
Ino, knowing her better than anyone has a right to, just smiles. Her smile, Sakura thinks, is a bit like that of a shark's only a shark was never nearly so glittery around the edges. "But...?"  
  
Sakura smiles. "It's _amazing_ ," she burbles. "He's actually teaching me! And he's strict but I'm learning so much. Hatake-sensei doesn't like repeating himself, but he will if I don't understand and if I have a question he'll patiently help me work through it until I've got it down pat."  
  
Because she can and because Ino is right there, Sakura wriggles over to throw her arms around her best friend, dirt and all.   
  
Ino doesn't shove her off, which makes her happier. They'd been rivals for so long, but—she's missed Ino. Fiercely.   
  
"I'm so happy," Sakura says dreamily. "I hurt everywhere and tomorrow is going to be worse because he's not going to go any easier on me and I'll be sore from the start but I'm learning! He's going to teach me _genjutsu_. He flat out told me I'm not very good."  
  
"He _what?_ " Ino yelps.  
  
Sakura hurries on, her arms tightening around Ino, to keep her from storming off to yell at Hatake-sensei. "No, no!" Sakura says quickly. "It's okay. He said that to help me understand how we were going to make it _better_."  
  
Ino eyes her suspiciously.  
  
"It's true," Sakura insists. "Honest, Ino." She looks down, biting her lip, and fidgets.   
  
Ino, being Ino, takes a moment to play with her hair. "What are you thinking?" she asks.  
  
Taking heart from the fact that Ino doesn't sound like she's going to haul off and smack Hatake-sensei (it is a fact of Sakura's world that despite Hatake-sensei's greater skill and experience, Sakura believes that if it came to a fight about her, Ino would win; Ino has always won when she really wants something) Sakura rests her head against Ino's leg, knowing she's getting Ino even dirtier and not saying anything about it.  
  
Ino doesn't tell her off about it either. Just toys with her hair and waits.   
  
"He said," Sakura says carefully, "that it would be better if I had a team to train with."  
  
Ino's fingers pause. "Like, join up with another three-man team?"  
  
"No," Sakura replies, shaking her head slightly. "Someone else he can work with. He doesn't want to deal with the mess of paperwork that comes from combining an incomplete team with a complete. He sounded utterly _disgusted_ at the idea."  
  
No one has ever called Ino stupid when it comes to the important things. "He wants someone to switch over to your team." Ino's voice is carefully, utterly blank. It's a bit scary because Ino is someone who uses emotions rather than uses the lack of them to make a point.  
  
Sakura makes herself look up at Ino, which is very intimidating when she suspects that Ino has figured out where this is going. "He asked me if I knew anyone who'd like real training," she says, her voice coming out wheedling and a bit meek. "I said I might."  
  
 _You interested?_ drifts, unsaid but heard, between them.  
  
Ino's eyebrows rise. "I see," she says dryly. "He doesn't want to deal with the paperwork for combining a team but he's willing to deal with the paperwork for a transfer?"  
  
That's not a no. Sakura takes heart from that.  
  
"It's only a few sheets," she says, still wheedling. "You'd have to sign in triplicate and it's probably a good idea if you get your parents' permission," despite being technically adult, in Konoha, upon becoming a full shinobi, at their age, parents could make things extremely difficult if they took it to the Hokage, "but..."  
  
"I'll think about it," Ino says, with a note of finality to the words, and Sakura knows not to push. Ino _will_ think about it. That's good enough. She revels in hope and clings a little more.   
  
"Hatake-sensei says if you decide to join, to meet us at Training Area Seventeen," Sakura says.  
  
"When?"  
  
"Tomorrow, five in the morning."  
  
Ino nods and they lapse into silence until Ino shoos her off to the shower.  
  
When Sakura gets out of the shower, achy but clean, Ino is gone. Sakura dreams deeply that night of endless blue eyes, silver hair, and an expanse of hope more beautiful than any dawn on the horizon.


	6. Call It What You Want

Like she promised Sakura, Ino thinks about her request to join another team. She thinks about it all through helping out at the shop, through supper and through the clean up after. Then, once her dad says he's heading out to the greenhouses, she follows him. They walk along the streets of Konoha, not at a rush, not in a hurry to get anywhere, and Ino still thinks about it.  
  
There's a lot to think about, when it comes to Sakura's offer. Hatake-sensei hasn't been around long enough to show his faults (and she's _sure_ he's got them, when he's just Kakashi-sensei, de-aged or from a different time or something) and while Sakura's bubbling over with enthusiasm now, who is to say that'll last a week, or two, or three?  
  
On the other hand, Ino had watched the way Sakura had moved when she'd staggered into her room. She'd been totally wrung out.  
  
Ino can't remember the last time she's been wrung out from training with Asuma-sensei and the boys.  
  
It makes her violently, terribly jealous. She _wants_ that. She wants it _badly_.  
  
She just doesn't know if Hatake-sensei can give it to her. How good can he really be? He's the man that Kakashi-sensei was and if it was a toss-up between Kakashi-sensei and Asuma-sensei, Ino knows which one she'd pick in a heartbeat.  
  
(Ino loves Asuma-sensei, she does, but he doesn't force her past her limits.)  
  
But, really, no one else is _offering_. Only Hatake-sensei. Ino stews over this silently.  
  
When they're in the greenhouse and she's occupied with weeding--there is always weeding to do--while her father inspects his experimental hybrids, that's when Ino decides that she really should get a second opinion. Sakura is right anyhow. If she really wants to do this then she's got to make sure that her dad at least knows about it.  
  
"Dad," she says, not looking up from her weeding. He doesn't look up from his hybrids, but she knows he's listening. Her daddy always listens to her. "What would you say if I wanted to join another team?"  
  
He's silent for a long moment. Ino spends that time biting her lip and pulling out more weeds, just to give her hands something to do.  
  
"What brings this on?" he asks. "It's not because you're still upset about Shikamaru not picking you for that mission, are you?"  
  
That's a good question.  
  
Ino grimaces. She _is_ still upset about it. She's aware that she's not a powerhouse type of ninja but it offends her on a deep level that Shikamaru assumed that power was the only way to beat the enemy. And it _hurts_ that he left her behind because he thought she'd be useless.  
  
Even if his goal had been to protect her, well, Ino doesn't want to be _protected_.  
  
"No," she says, because she hadn't really considered the idea of a transfer in that light. "It's not about that." Though now she wonders if Shikamaru and Chouji and Asuma-sensei will assume that it is, if she does this. That's uncomfortable. It makes her seem really childish.  
  
(But is it so very childish to go after what's the best for her?)  
  
"Why would you consider a transfer then?" Her father might have sounded like he was being dismissive to anyone else but Ino knows him nearly as well as she knows herself and knows that he is giving her the chance to convince him of her reasoning.  
  
She takes a deep breath, looking up to meet his eyes. They're the same shade as hers, neither of them with pupils--a mark of their Clan. "Have you heard about what happened to Hatake Kakashi?" That's the place to start.  
  
"Yes," he says evenly. "I've been called in to consult on his case. What do you have to do with it, princess?"  
  
"He's training Sakura," she blurts. "Actually, like, paying attention to her. She was dead on her feet when she got home tonight and she's learning a lot and he's actually paying attention to her this time instead of ignoring her." Being her father, he's well aware of her complaints about Sakura's sensei. He's heard them more than anyone.  
  
"Go on."  
  
"Asuma-sensei doesn't train me," Ino says. They both know it's true. She's heard her father gripe about it to Shikaku-san and Chouza-san before, when she wasn't supposed to hear it. "He barely trains Chouji and his idea of training Shikamaru is playing board games with him. Sakura told me that Hatake-sensei wants me for his team. He _wants_ to train me. Sakura needs another Genin to work off of and push her further. I can do that."  
  
To her surprise, as she talks, she realizes that not only can she do that (which isn't a surprise) but that she _wants_ to do it, which rather is. Ino doesn't like Kakashi-sensei.  
  
What she's seen and heard so far about Hatake-sensei, she likes a lot better. Even when she'd barged in on him and spent hours explaining exactly why he needed to smarten up, he'd listened to her and hadn't talked down to her.  
  
Grudgingly, she counts that as a point in his favour.  
  
"Do you want to do that?" Her dad sets his hybrid seedling down in its tray and looks at her. "Ino, switching teams is going to cause tensions between you and Shikamaru and Chouji. It's going to make Asuma-sensei look bad."  
  
"I want to do it," she says firmly, making up her mind. "I can handle Shikamaru and Chouji and if Asuma-sensei had actually bothered to pay attention to me then I'd never have wanted to leave. I don't think he even knows my goals. He never even _asked_ , Dad."  
  
It's an old complaint.  
  
"If he looks bad for that, then it's his own fault." Ino believes that, entirely. "Though--will transferring teams be a problem with the Nara and Akimichi Clans? I don't want to cause problems for you, Dad."  
  
He thinks about it. Ino appreciates that he doesn't just flat out tell her yes or no without considering the situation from all angles. He hasn't even told her if she can do this or if he's entirely against it. There's no one in the world Ino loves more than her father. He's never let her down, even when they disagree.  
  
"It will help that it would be to Sakura-chan's team. I can pass it off as girlish friendship and a desire to help out. I don't think Shikaku or Chouza will _like_ it but Shikamaru's already a Chuunin and there's going to be times when your team would be split anyway…"  
  
Ino holds her breath, waiting for his verdict.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next morning, Ino is waiting for both of them. She's got her hair tied back and is armed to the teeth.  
  
Hatake-sensei smiles.  
  
Sakura squeals and flings her arms around Ino.  
  
"My father says that if I don't show improvement under your hands, that I'm to go back to my old team," Ino tells Hatake-sensei.  
  
"How long a trial period has he given me?"  
  
"Three weeks."  
  
Hatake-sensei nods. "That's enough time to make a noticeable difference if you're willing to work hard."  
  
"You'll find my work ethic to be impeccable," Ino says with utmost confidence.  
  
Sakura agrees with Ino's assessment of herself. Ino has never been one to shirk her duties or her training. It's just that no one has ever bothered to give her all of their attention before.  
  
Asuma-sensei will have no idea what he's missed, Sakura gloats. Because Ino is _hers_ now and the only person she has to share her with is Hatake-sensei.  
  
Things are looking up. Way, way up.  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi looks over his two students and knows this is the right thing to do. He's even pleased about the Yamanaka having agreed and gotten permission to be here! It will help Sakura and Sakura had been absolutely determined that Ino be her teammate the moment that he'd floated the idea of getting one at her.  
  
They'll need a third. Eventually. But right now, Kakashi thinks, he's going to have enough trouble just dealing with the two of them. Sakura is below where she ought to be. He needs to find out where Ino is.  
  
But that is what they are at Training Area Seventeen for.  
  
"Ino," he says, "has all the paperwork for your transfer been signed?"  
  
She nods. "On my part," Ino says. "Signed and delivered to the Hokage's office this morning. Dad signed off on it too, so no one can countermand it unless those orders come straight from Hokage-sama herself." She considers that. "Or you, Hatake-sensei."  
  
Sakura looks vaguely anxious.  
  
"I'm not going to countermand them," he says, which makes both the girls relax. "We'll go after training today and finish them up officially." Kakashi hates paperwork. It leaves him feeling a bit bemused that he's actually looking forward to doing this bit of it. "Have you told your old team yet?"  
  
Ino shakes her head. "Chouji's got personal training with his dad right now and Shikamaru and Asuma-sensei are out on a mission that I'm not ranked high enough to go on."  
  
He takes a moment to admire the fact that she can say that so bluntly, without any bitterness clouding her voice. Internally, he winces at how fragmented their team must be that telling them of her transfer isn't even the first thing on her mind.  
  
"Okay," he says, "but when you can, tell them. Or else tell me that they're all in town and we'll tell them."  
  
As he had half-suspected, she looks relieved at the offer. Kakashi doesn't blame her. Even when a transfer is a good thing for the transferee, it's a hard thing to do when faced with the disapproval of everyone else.  
  
"Yes, Hatake-sensei."  
  
Sakura beams at him.  
  
Kakashi wonders how he's going to survive two teenaged girls and their dramas. Boys aren't any better, drama-wise, but he's more used to it from boys. It makes a difference.  
  
"All right," he says, refusing to dwell on it. "Sakura, today you're going to be doing conditioning. Ino, you're with me today. I need to see exactly where you are. Sakura, if you need help or have any questions, don't hesitate to ask."  
  
Both girls nod.  
  
Pleased with their willingness--and he hopes to god that Sakura doesn't think he's ignoring her for the day because that isn't the case at all and that's the last thing her fragile trust in him needs--he has Ino go and stretch out while he sets Sakura to her practice and then crooks his fingers at Ino and gestures her over to the other side of the training area.  
  
She looks apprehensive but determined.  
  
"This isn't about winning," he says. "This is about seeing everything you can do."  
  
"Clan jutsu?" she asks.  
  
Kakashi thinks that over. "Not today," he decides. "That's something we'll go over later, of course, but I want to see your fundamentals."  
  
"Got it."  
  
He slides into a ready stance. "Whenever you're ready."  
  
Her eyes gleam with the challenge in his words.  
  


* * *

  
  
Physically, Ino is better than Sakura.  
  
Which is what he'd suspected. Her taijutsu are of a higher level, her chakra reserves are larger (probably, he thinks, from her training with her Clan jutsu) and she's physically stronger and faster.  
  
Sakura relies more on traps and jutsu. Ino eschews the both of them in favour of trying to kick the shit out of him. As Kakashi blocks a Chuunin mid-level kick with one arm and feels the power of it travel up to his shoulder and resonate in his bones--he'll have a bruise later--he has to admit he's impressed. Her speed is quite good for a Genin too, probably because her legs are so strong.  
  
But she doesn't like to use her arms in combat (and when he forces her to, she's far weaker there than with her legs) and her ninjutsu repertoire is practically non-existent. Even Sakura had known a few extra ninjutsu. Ino knows the basics they teach in the Academy and nothing else. When it comes to genjutsu, she doesn't even know a simple _kai_.  
  
It makes Kakashi's blood boil.  
  
Both girls are walking liabilities. Even with Ino's Clan jutsu, it's only useful in certain circumstances and only then if backed up appropriately.  
  
What the hell is wrong with Konoha that this level of training for the kunoichi is acceptable? In the few days he's been here, Kakashi has had his ear to the ground and what he's heard horrifies and alarms him in equal measures.  
  
Of the Genin girls, it's widely considered that Ino is _exceptional_ for her age and rank.  
  
Kakashi thinks of all the girls he's known and wonders what happened. Even Rin, who had been so hyper-focused on her medical training that the rest of her capabilities had taken a hit would have been able to take both Sakura and Ino out when she'd been a Genin.  
  
By the end of training, Ino can barely stand, though she's still trying her hardest to do so and look combat-ready, and his temper is being held in check only through sheer force of will. It is bad enough admitting that he'd been a piss-poor teacher and that he was going to have to work hard to undo the damage he'd managed to cause his Genin.  
  
It is ugly and shocking to be confronted with the fact that he is not the only piss-poor teacher who'd been put in charge of Genin. What is Asuma thinking? And if Ino is this flawed, how are her teammates faring?  
  
He's tempted to ask.  
  
He refrains mostly because he wants Ino to believe he's focused on her training, not on her teammates. Asking now would be a blow to her self-confidence and while she's far and away more confident than Sakura is that would be needlessly cruel at this stage.  
  
Later. He can ask later. He's not sure his temper can take any more disappointments in Konoha today.  
  
Right now he's got to give his second student a critique of her abilities. That's the most important thing. Kakashi takes a breath and thinks about what Minato-sensei would say.  
  
"I'm sure you've heard from Sakura what I said to her," he says.  
  
Ino straightens up, her hair a tangled mess, her clothes filthy and her legs trembling despite her best efforts to control them. Her arms are bruised. "Yes," she says and her eyes flare with that. "I can handle it, Hatake-sensei."  
  
Kakashi finds that he believes her. The look in her eyes tells him that. He strongly suspects that where he had to be careful of Sakura's self-esteem in critiquing her, Ino is the sort of girl that will take everything he'll say as a personal affront and work at it until it's no longer an issue. Sakura, he thinks, will be like that eventually. She's just not there yet.  
  
And no wonder considering everything.  
  
"You'd better be able to handle it," he says, just to have her eyes narrow at him. Yanking her chain is juvenile of him but he suspects that she works best with some challenge in her life to throw herself against. Right now he needs for her to see him as the biggest challenge or else she'll never learn exactly what he wants her to learn. "Who taught you taijutsu? Why don't you use your arms more?"  
  
"Because my Clan jutsu requires that my arms be free," she says. "It's easier to just attack with my legs rather than juggling weapons and jutsu. Dad taught me a lot of my taijutsu."  
  
He nods. That's about what he expected. Clan shinobi have more strengths than the first generation ninja, but they have their own weaknesses too.  
  
"Your dad is a Jounin," Kakashi says bluntly. "He can get away with stylistic choices like choosing not to use a weapon unless absolutely necessary. You're a Genin. You cannot. You _will_ be learning to properly use your arms in a fight--we'll build your strength up there until they match your legs. You've got good, strong legs. You need good, strong arms. From what I saw, your forms aren't the problem. You've got excellent technique--just none of the strength required to back it up. In a fight, that's a liability."  
  
Ino looks determined as she nods and doesn't complain.  
  
"Furthermore," he continues, "your knowledge of genjutsu is nonexistent. We're fixing that. Your control is fine enough that you should be able to pick up an array of genjutsu that will aid you in fights. When I dismiss you and Sakura tonight, get her to teach you the basic counter to a genjutsu. Asuma should have taught you that months ago."  
  
"He didn't teach me _anything_ ," Ino bursts out. "That's why I'm here!"  
  
That earns her a grim smile. "And so you're going to be learning a lot--we've got to make up for your deficiencies."  
  
She flushes, eyes sparkling with anger.  
  
_Pride_ , he thinks, _is something the Yamanaka Clan have never lacked. But I can work with it._  
  
Out-loud he says, "And beyond that, your ninjutsu repertoire is painfully barren. At the moment you're a one-trick pony, Ino. You will get killed in a battle because you have zero versatility."  
  
Sakura, he sees, is drawing closer, probably to leap to Ino's defense if it looks like her friend needs it. As she's finished her conditioning, Kakashi lets her come closer with a nod. She slips up to stand beside Ino, giving her teammate a concerned look.  
  
Ino, rather than angry, has gone expressionless. Kakashi wonders if he's pushed her too far.  
  
"Both of you are walking liabilities," he says blandly. Sakura flinches, Ino's expression doesn't change. "That's not your fault. You've both done your best to keep up and your attempts _show_. I appreciate them. Sakura, your control and ability to use textbook jutsu under trying circumstances is extraordinary. Ino, your lower body strength and skill is that of a Chuunin easily and you're quick on your feet to take advantage of openings. Neither of you give up easily. All of these things are very good and I'm proud of you."  
  
Sakura relaxes. Ino still doesn't move.  
  
He wonders what she's thinking. It's probably a good thing he can't read minds.  
  
"Your problems are not what you are," he says. "Both of you have the potential to be very, very good shinobi." He believes that, which makes it far easier to say forcefully. "Right now, however, neither of you is fit for anything over a D rank mission. Maybe the Hokage would send you on missions higher than that, maybe your teams would take you on missions higher than that, but as far as I'm concerned, you are not ready and neither of you should even try to become Chuunin yet."  
  
And here's the most important part, the one he wants them to remember like it is stamped on their foreheads:  
  
"This is _not your fault_."  
  
That gets a reaction out of Ino. "It's our previous sensei who are at fault," she says flatly. "That's what you're getting at."  
  
Sakura looks between him and Ino, obviously worried about where this is going to go. "That's not fair to Hatake-sensei, Ino..."  
  
"It's fine, Sakura," he says. Compared to the things that Ino has said to him in private, this is nothing. "She is talking about Kakashi-sensei, not myself. And she's right. What Kakashi-sensei and what Asuma have done to the two of you is criminal in my eyes. In my time they'd both be raked over the coals by the Hokage for not training either of you properly. Ino!"  
  
Her head snaps up savagely. He's glad to see that reaction from her. "Yes, Hatake-sensei?"  
  
"What did Asuma do to train your team?"  
  
She scowls at him. "We'd go for yakitori and while Chouji ate, he'd play shougi with Shikamaru."  
  
Internally, Kakashi winces. Shikamaru's a Chuunin now. That's hideous to contemplate.  
  
"Sakura," he says, "how did Kakashi-sensei train your team?"  
  
Sakura hitches one shoulder up in a half-shrug. "He'd teach Sasuke something and Naruto would butt in and demand to learn something too and I got left with whatever I could pick up by watching them. The only compliment I ever got was so the boys would try harder." That sounds bitter.  
  
Ino's hand reaches over to hold Sakura's. Kakashi pretends he doesn't see that for all their sakes.  
  
He gauges the time, gives them a few moments to comfort each other, and then smiles. "Well, then," he says, "now that we know where both of you are… let's get back to training."


	7. Don't Look Back

When Hatake-sensei dismisses them, Sakura and Ino trudge back to Sakura's place in silence. Sakura chews on her lower lip nervously as she tries and fails to guess what Ino is thinking about the first day of training with her new (and hopefully forever) sensei. Was he too harsh?  
  
He'd seemed harsher to Ino than he'd been to her, which Sakura doesn't quite get. She's got as many faults as Ino (in her heart, she tends to believe that she's got more but Hatake-sensei hadn't seemed to see it the same way) and Ino has been very quiet since the breakdown of her flaws finished. Even through the rest of their training, Ino had attacked each task given to her grimly, and silently.  
  
Optimistically, Sakura tries to believe it's because Ino is tired.  
  
Sakura is, after all, and Ino doesn't look any better. Their steps are slow and slightly wobbly, their hands shake, their clothes are horrifically dirty and torn and their chakra's been worked down to embers. Maybe it's just that.  
  
(She knows it's not just that.)  
  
"Are you staying over for supper?" she asks, trying to think if she's got anything in the cupboards that Ino will like that won't take forever to make. Her parents won't be home tonight, she remembers.  
  
"We'll order in," Ino says.  
  
"I can't--"  
  
"I'll pay for it," Ino interrupts. "Don't worry about it."  
  
Sakura lets it drop, just sighs. "You get first shower then."  
  
"Like I was ever going to go second," Ino scoffs.  
  
"It's my place!"  
  
"You treat your guests before yourself! Everyone knows that!"  
  
They keep bickering, verging somewhere between half-serious and half-kidding the rest of the walk home. Sakura feels better for the arguing because it's more _Ino_ than the earlier quiet. She hates it when Ino is quiet. Because of that, she doesn't bring up Hatake-sensei until after they've both showered and have eaten (leaving the takeout boxes strewn over her floor, all of them within easy reach of either of them decide they want more to eat).  
  
It's tempting, more than a little, to just let Ino go home without asking. She bites the inside of her cheek, hard, and refuses to take the coward's way out--Sakura thinks in horror of how she'd feel if Ino just didn't show up the next morning to training and she hadn't even bothered to ask.  
  
'Hatake-sensei wants you to teach me the basic way to cancel genjutsu," Ino says, leaning against the bed. "He says Asuma-sensei should have taught me it months and months ago."  
  
"Are you mad at Hatake-sensei?" Sakura asks, getting up to sit next to Ino. Sakura's reassured when, the moment she sits down, Ino leans over to rest against her.  
  
"I'm going to kick his ass."  
  
Sakura plays with Ino's hair, spreading it over her shoulder to finger comb the still damp strands. In the lamp light they practically glow. "That's not what I asked."  
  
Ino sighs. "I don't know. Yes. No. Take your pick. I'm mad but it's--"  
  
"Not Hatake-sensei's fault?" Sakura suggests when Ino trails off. "Something like that?"  
  
"Not really," Ino says grudgingly. "I mean, it's better to... to hear that I _suck_ than die but it still..."  
  
"You don't suck," Sakura tells her honestly. "You're better than I am. And Hatake-sensei didn't say you sucked either. He just wants use to be aware of our flaws."  
  
"You're not the 'one-trick pony'," Ino says, rolling her eyes and nonetheless relaxing. "Though I suppose what with both of us being called walking liabilities, that's not saying much either."  
  
"Ouch."  
  
Ino grimaces. "Not my favourite thing to be called either."  
  
Sakura braids all of Ino's hair, wishing it was longer, knowing it isn't because Ino used it against her in the Chuunin exams, and has unraveled her work to begin braiding it again before Ino says anything else.  
  
"No," Ino says, "I'm not mad at Hatake-sensei. I'm offended."  
  
"At him?"  
  
"At being thought weak," Ino says. "Even worse—at _being_ weak. He was right, damn him. And there's only one way to fix that."  
  
Sakura beams at Ino. "By getting good enough to kick his ass, right?"  
  
"Yeah," Ino smiles, then, and Sakura's world goes back to being the bright and beautiful place it had been that morning when Ino had shown up for training on their team. Ino isn't going to leave her team. She's staying. "We're going to kick his ass." Ino looks at her hands. "Show me the counter, would you? Then we're going out training."  
  
It's past eight at night. They have to meet up for five tomorrow and Hatake-sensei isn't late the way Kakashi-sensei used to be. Ino knows that though so Sakura doesn't remind her. "Okay," she says, instead, "what are you going to work on?"  
  
"My upper body strength," Ino says promptly. "He'll be more use if he's working to fix my ninjutsu deficiencies during official training and I can strengthen my arms without supervision. What'll you work on?"  
  
"My stamina," Sakura says with a sigh. "I'm crap at being able to sustain myself through a battle and that's not something that shortcuts can be taken to learn. Just practice."  
  
"We'll get better," Ino says with determination laced through her voice.   
  
Sakura has to laugh. "Or die trying?"  
  
Ino doesn't even have the heart to pretend to lie about it. "Pretty much," she says, standing with a groan. "If that's the only way that we're going to get stronger then it might be worth it."  
  
"I'm not interested in dying," Sakura insists but gets up when Ino fixes her with a look. "But okay, we'll try this your way."  


* * *

  
  
A week and a half later, Kakashi collapses on his couch, careful not to sit on any of the traps, even in his exhaustion, and wonders why he was daft enough to want to train two students, let alone one. He knows that logically, it's the only thing that makes sense. Having another person around has pushed Sakura to work even harder, especially as Ino is the one person who, more than anything, Sakura does not want to lose to.  
  
He shifts, pulling a kunai out so that it doesn't gouge though his uniform, and toys with that as he tilts his head up at the ceiling. Saying that Sakura doesn't want to lose to Ino is a simplification, Kakashi knows. Their relationship is more complicated but it's clear that, whatever the reason, Sakura is determined to not be someone who _Ino_ cannot be proud of.  
  
That's... interesting. He wonders what sort of home life Sakura has. If he should ask. He's not sure it's appropriate for him to do so when she's managing admirably under his tutelage. But perhaps...  
  
Sakura's training is going excellently. Her control is improving by leaps and bounds and despite the fact that she might not always get something down on the first try, she tries with all her being. Kakashi finds himself well pleased with her. She's going to be an utterly deadly kunoichi (and he was right, her flair for genjutsu is going to be prodigious) and he doesn't understand what other, older him, had been thinking to ignore the want she had to learn.  
  
Thinking of that makes him think of Asuma. He really _really_ doesn't understand what Asuma had been thinking to ignore Ino.   
  
Ino is just terrifying.   
  
It had taken him approximately three hours to decide that her claim, about her impeccable working ethic, had not been an idle boast. It had taken him two days to see that while Ino liked to talk trash and while she liked to chatter and gossip and laugh, she was _violently_ driven to succeed. Sakura believed whole-heartedly in Ino.   
  
Kakashi did too.   
  
He rather thought that while Sakura was going to be the more _powerful_ kunoichi, Ino was going to be the more _deadly_ of the two of them. Sakura was _kind_ , under her insecurities and her heart was gentle even as her strength would let her do anything, in time. Ino was steel and violence and utter ruthlessness hidden by a laugh.  
  
If he thought about it for long, Kakashi found himself idly wondering if he was teaching both the next Hokage and the next head of ANBU. It was possible.  
  
It was years down the road and he was just daydreaming. Every sensei probably had the same dreams for their teams--if they were good sensei.  
  
And it was a _good_ dream. He's only known them for less than a month and he believes in them. Kakashi wonders what is wrong with everyone in this time that they'd not seen the potential in them before.  
  
Asuma had simply let Ino skate by and Ino had done her best--that she'd managed to keep up with no directed training aside from her father's sporadic lessons was impressive and a testament to her ability to work hard--and his older-self had been content to ignore Sakura, barely tossing her a few crumbs of training, until Sakura had found her own teacher.  
  
He grimaces slightly. Tsunade-sama wasn't best pleased that he'd taken away the most promising apprentice she'd found in years. It is only the fact that it had been Sakura's wish to prioritize genjutsu that had kept the Hokage from sending him flying through a wall. Even so, she still found time to tutor Sakura in the medical-nin arts.  
  
Kakashi gets up, running one hand through his hair.   
  
It was well and good to train two of them. He enjoys the both of them deeply and watching their training made him feel good about being here in a way that nothing else did (the world was so different while still being the same; it was disconcerting). He also knows that he is going to have to find them a third if they wanted to participate in the Chuunin exams.   
  
Already he'd decided that he didn't want them in the next exam--the ones coming up in a few months. He'd wait the extra six months and train them further and then... well, Kakashi would be deeply surprised if they didn't mop the floor with their competition.   
  
Kakashi smiles.   
  
It's a pretty picture.   


* * *

  
  
A week after that, Ino lingers after he's dismissed her and Sakura for the day. "Yes, Ino?"  
  
"My old team are all back in the village," Ino says, looking worried. "Hatake-sensei, will you still…"  
  
"Come with you to tell them of the transfer?" he says. "Of course, I said I would."  
  
Ino nods, a bit doubtfully, but doesn't argue that point. Kakashi considers it a minor victory that Ino has stopped vocalizing her opinion of each and every one of 'Kakashi-sensei's' flaws and applying them to him.   
  
Trust is an essential ingredient to a healthy team. Sakura and Ino trust each other the way he's seen very few people ever do. Their teamwork is flawless and he knows that they spend all day in each other's company, eat supper, and then go train more together. Sakura's trust in him is a fragile thing that's blooming a little more each day.  
  
Ino is harder to read, which bemuses him, because of the two girls, Ino is the one that says, constantly, what's on her mind.  
  
But he doesn't really know where he stands with her.  
  
Sakura's feelings, thoughts, and opinions are written across her face. Ino's better at keeping her own counsel.  
  
"Did you want to arrange a meeting time?" he asks, leaving the decision up to her. "Or just wander up to them?"  
  
She twirls a bit of hair around one finger, clearly considering the options. "They should be having yakitori right now," she says, with a sidelong glance at him. "Would that be okay?"   
  
Kakashi is acutely aware of the fact that this is a test. Ino's voice is casual but her body language screams her nervousness. She doesn't know if he'll keep his word and facing her old team by herself would be difficult.   
  
He is also aware that facing her old team by herself would destroy the small measure of trust he's managed to gain from her.  
  
_Well played,_ he thinks. _Well played indeed._  
  
"I've got time," Kakashi says. "Let's go and see what they say, shall we?"  
  
Ino brightens. "Yes, Hatake-sensei."  
  
He studies her. "Did you want to get Sakura to come along as well?"  
  
She hesitates, clearly thinking it over, and then shakes her head. "No," Ino says decisively. "If it goes badly then… then I don't want them blaming her while they're still dealing with the shock. Maybe they will blame her later, I don't know, but I think it'd be better without her now."  
  
Kakashi doesn't mention the fact that Ino looks slightly lost without Sakura. He's used to seeing them together, side-by-side.  
  
It's somewhat of a shock as he realizes that he likes seeing them together--but why not? They're _his_ team.  
  
"You'd know better than I," he says amiably, beginning to saunter out of the training grounds. Ino follows him, her pace quicker than his to make up for her shorter legs. "Are you sorry you left them?"  
  
"No!"   
  
He raises one eyebrow at her.  
  
She flushes and looks everywhere but at him. "You're not that bad," Ino mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.  
  
"High praise," he murmurs, a laugh touching his voice.  
  
Ino scowls at him.  
  
Kakashi's smile widens a little more. "Let's talk about manipulation," he says, choosing to not antagonize her more… for the moment. "That was a pretty little scene you pulled on me."  
  
Ino fumbles her next step before regaining her balance. "You were going to do it anyway," she accuses.   
  
He appreciates that she doesn't try to deny it. Both Ino and Sakura have good instincts for when a lie would be useless.  
  
Kakashi considers that. "… Yes," he agrees slowly. "So why the need to try and con me into it?"  
  
She shrugs, looking uncomfortable.   
  
"Out with it," he orders, his voice taking on the same sharpness he uses to train them. "Now, Yamanaka."  
  
Her back straightens, her head goes back, and her eyes flash. Ino's pride doesn't like getting bossed around. From the tidbits he's gathered about her previous team, it surprises him not at all that Ino had been in charge of her teammates. "I suppose to see if you would," she says, a bit flatly.  
  
He nods slowly. "You still don't trust me."   
  
Ino glances at him sideways. Kakashi keeps his face blank and waits for her to decide what that means. He'd be lying to himself if he said it didn't hurt to know of her lack of trust--but on the other hand, he already knew that of his team, Ino's trust was the more flimsy thing. It's not a surprise to have her say it.  
  
"No," she says. "I don't. Not really."  
  
"We'll work on that," Kakashi promises as they approach the yakitori restaurant that Ino has led them to. It looks like any other place and if he hadn't been brought here, he'd never have thought anything of it.   
  
Ino looks at the signs with a closed off expression. He wonders what she's thinking.  
  
He doesn't ask. If she tells anyone, it'll be Sakura and there's some things that a sensei should stay out of.  
  
They duck inside.   
  
Ino is recognized by the server and she murmurs a few words that Kakashi doesn't bother listening to as he scans the place for exits, for people, for layout. He keeps an eye out on her though and, when she smiles (it doesn't touch her eyes) to the server and leads the way into the restaurant, he moves with her.  
  
"He wondered where I'd been," Ino says, her voice muted. "Said he's glad I'm not sick or anything."  
  
Kakashi hesitates a moment and then, figuring that the pluses were worth more than the risk, rested one hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently in reassurance. Her smile flickers a bit as she looks at him.  
  
"It will be alright," he says. "You're not having second thoughts?"  
  
She shakes her head. "No," Ino tells him. "No. I want to stay on Team 7."  
  
"Then you will."  
  
"Ino!" A boy's voice gets both their attention and Ino turns towards the round boy, waving his chopsticks to get their attention.  
  
His student takes a deep breath and puts on a smile that looks more realistic than the one she'd given the server. "Chouji," she says, making her way over to the table.  
  
Kakashi follows a few steps behind, taking in the boy who must be Shikamaru--he looks like his father and he's wearing a Chuunin's vest. Looking at Asuma, however, Kakashi is surprised at how mixed his feelings are.  
  
Asuma had left the village. Had the luxury of doing that and studying elsewhere while the rest of them had stayed to clean up the destruction left in Kyuubi's wake. Kakashi tamps down on his feelings. "Yo," he says, lifting one hand and interrupting Ino and Chouji's conversation.  
  
Asuma might have left and he might not have been Kakashi's favourite person in the village (they were all dead--though his students were making a good try at working their way into his heart) but Asuma had never been stupid.  
  
His eyes narrow. "Who are you?"  
  
Ino steps back and to the side, giving him space while casually making it clear where she stands. Kakashi wonders, again, what Asuma had been doing with her. He'd been given someone _good_ and then not bothered to train her.  
  
"Hatake Kakashi," he says, a bit dryly. "For more information you'll have to talk to Hokage-sama." Kakashi smiles thinly. "It's classified, you see."  
  
Ino swallows a snicker.  
  
Kakashi raises one eyebrow at her and she shrugs, a bit helplessly. He'd mind more except for the fact that she looks more relaxed. That's a good thing.  
  
Asuma's narrow-eyed look doesn't change. "I'll ask her," he says coolly. Shikamaru is watching him with a penetrating look while Chouji is looking between him and Ino and slowly starting to look dismayed.  
  
Kakashi wonders if Ino had said anything to Chouji that would make him suspect. If he does, though, that's not a big deal. They're not here to make a song and game of it.  
  
"Good," he says. "We've got another order of business to talk about anyway." Kakashi nods at Ino.  
  
He'll be here to help if it goes wrong but she's got to say it.  
  
Ino's smile abruptly dies.  
  
Her shoulders remain straight however, and her gaze is clear. "Asuma-sensei," she says, "with my father's permission, I've applied for a transfer to Hatake-sensei's team. It was approved. I'm no longer a member of Team 10."  
  
Kakashi admires the nerve she has to say it so flatly--her voice doesn't even shake though he knows she's got to be torn up inside about saying it.  
  
Shikamaru's face shutters. Chouji makes a dismayed sound.   
  
Asuma looks at Ino for a lot moment and then, without a word, transfers his gaze to Kakashi. "Why would Hokage-sama approve of that?" he asks. "You destroyed the only team you ever passed."  
  
Kakashi's temper boils more at the casual way Ino is dismissed than at the jab at his other self's competency. He happens to agree about his other self. "You'll have to ask Hokage-sama that too," he says, his voice level. "Ino-chan, we're done here."  
  
Her eyes widen slightly at the honorific but she doesn't protest it.   
  
"You can't be serious," Chouji says, as he turns to go. "Ino, why?"  
  
Ino stiffens. "I'm very serious," she says, "and it's true. As for why… I wanted someone who would train me."  
  
"And he will--?"  
  
Kakashi is almost amused at the doubt in the Akimichi's voice. He knows Ino has probably ranted about his other self--and likely done so more than once.  
  
"Yes," Ino says without looking at her old team. "He will."  
  
They leave after that.  
  
Kakashi squeezes her shoulder again once they're outside. "How about you go and find Sakura," he suggests gently.   
  
The scene could have gone worse--but it also could have gone better and either way it was hard.  
  
Ino nods. "Okay. I--thank you, Hatake-sensei. I'll see you tomorrow."  
  
Kakashi watches her dart off through the crowds, gives the sky a glance, and then begins making his way towards the administrative building. He needs to talk to Tsunade. Failing that, he needs to talk to Shizune.  
  
Preferably before Asuma gets there.  


* * *

  
  
Sakura feels like she's the one on tenterhooks while waiting for Ino. When Ino stays behind (something that Sakura notices almost immediately) Sakura knows what's going on. She chews her lip, considers hanging around to go with Ino and then winds up walking home alone.  
  
Ino would have asked her if she'd wanted her along.  
  
Which means that Sakura is left alone to just think and wait and wonder how Ino's old team is taking it. Which leads her, during her shower, to thoughts of how her old team--Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei--would have taken all of this. Would they even have cared?  
  
The fact that she doesn't know if they would depresses her less these days. It is still super awful to think about but Sakura now can hold up her memories of training with Hatake-sensei and Ino against her first team's lack of care and the fact that things have changed warm her insides. Hatake-sensei says she isn't a failure. Ino has always believed that of her.  
  
Sakura wonders if she’s, slowly, starting to believe that as well.  
  
She hopes so.  
  
After her shower, she brushes out her hair and then takes out her notes on the medical jutsu she’s trying to learn. Hokage-sama had been disappointed but not surprised when Sakura had admitted that she wanted to learn genjutsu from Hatake-sensei. She wondered how often that happened, how few people stuck out training to be a medical ninja…  
  
_That’s not your fault,_ she scolds, her mental voice echoing everything that Hatake-sensei and Ino have said repeatedly. Sakura thinks she's starting to believe that too but every time she studies medicine--more field medicine over theory now, to adjust for her change in niche-training--she thinks of it again.  
  
By the time Ino gets to her place, showered and tidy, Sakura has almost managed to silence the voice in the back of her mind that belittles her accomplishments.  
  
"Hey," Ino says, standing in the doorway of Sakura's bedroom. "I let myself in."  
  
Sakura blinks at her. "You got past my mom? And my dad?"   
  
"You dad's in his office--his door's closed so that was easy. As for your mom… she didn't even notice me," Ino says, shrugging. "Busy watching some cheesy action flick. The ninja moves were _totally_ implausible."  
  
It's very Ino, Sakura thinks, to notice that sort of thing while sneaking through a room. "Have you eaten?" Sakura asks as Ino closes the door behind her and takes a few steps over to the bed to collapse on it.  
  
Ino wraps her arms around Sakura's pillow and sighs. "No," she says, "I haven't eaten. I'm not hungry."  
  
Sakura points her pen at Ino. "Nuh huh," she says, "you know we're not allowed evening training unless we eat."  
  
Ino flings the pillow at her. Sakura catches it and flings it back. "You know that," Sakura repeats sternly. "Hatake-sensei doesn't want us getting sick and part of avoiding that is proper nutrition."  
  
"I hate you," Ino says, though the words lack heat. "You're right. What do you want to eat? Stay in or go out?"  
  
Sakura weighs how much money she has with inflicting a moody Ino on her mother and reluctantly kisses her money good bye. "Let's go out," she says. "Maybe we can get some okonomiyaki?"  
  
She'd suggest yakitori, but she wants Ino to talk to her, not storm off in a huff.  
  
Ino is silent for a few moments and then sits up. "Works for me," she says, with the false brightness that it's only recently that Sakura's realized she can sometimes see through.   
  
It's illuminating to know that Ino is almost always lying in a way. And sad.  
  
"Okay," Sakura says simply. "You go out the window and knock."  
  
Ino rolls her eyes but is out the window in seconds. Sakura turns back to her books, like she's not expecting anyone to show up, and waits until her mother calls her down.  
  
It's another, stupid lie but it's one that will keep her mom from freaking out that Ino, who is after all just a Genin, can get in and out of their house like it's no problem. Sakura's tried explaining that it doesn't mean anything but privacy means different things to civilians.  
  
"Long time no see," Sakura greets Ino when she's been called down and meets her friend, her teammate, at the front door.   
  
Ino rolls her eyes. "Yeah," she says, "like this afternoon."  
  
But it gets a tiny smile out of her anyway. Sakura counts that as a win.  
  
"Where to?" Sakura asks.   
  
Ino shrugs as they head down the street, both of them ignoring the admonishment to not be out too late. "I don't care. Not hungry, remember?"  
  
"How did it go?" Sakura asks.  
  
Ino's eyes darken. "Badly," she says shortly. "Chouji's upset, Asu--Sarutobi-san ignored me, and Shikamaru didn't say a word. I'm sure he'll find words to say later, but now…"  
  
Sakura winces. "I'm sorry."  
  
Ino just sighs. "So am I."


	8. Complications

Kakashi waits as Tsunade-sama thinks over his request. As he waits, he studies her the same way she studies him.   
  
He wonders what she thinks of him, when contrasted with his other self.  
  
"I can keep the information from Sarutobi Asuma," she says, leaning back. "But some of your peers are going to figure it out. He might even figure it out."  
  
"I know," he says. "And I plan to tell at least one of them myself." Gai deserves that much. Just as soon as Kakashi can catch him between missions, which hasn't happened yet. "But I want to see how Ino handles herself in the coming days on the matter of her old team. Sarutobi's confusion on my current situation will be more telling if he's not given a heads up as to what's really going on."  
  
"That's a pretty harsh test of character," Tsunade-sama says. "She's just a Genin."  
  
"I'm not going to coddle them," Kakashi replies firmly. "They've had enough of it, they don't want it, and I have every confidence that this test is one she can handle." Thinking about the way Ino and Sakura rely on each other, he amends his words to, "This test is one _both_ of them can handle."  
  
"You don't think it'll erode their confidence in you as their sensei?"  
  
"It won't," he says, "because I'm not going to keep it a secret from them. I'm going to let them know and let them know if they need me, I'll have their back."  
  
Her eyes, which had been coolly evaluating, soften slightly. "You're a good sensei."  
  
"No," he says, "I'm just picking up the pieces of a mess another me made."  
  
"That too," Tsunade-sama says.  
  
Kakashi thinks he might love her for that, just a little. Which is terribly inappropriate.   
  
"What are you going to do about the fact that they need a third teammate?" Tsunade-sama asks next. "I have no problems with your current team but they're not going to be able to qualify for the Chuunin Exams without a third."  
  
"I'm not entering them this time around," Kakashi says quietly. "They're clever enough to pass, unless they came up against a monster or a genius," though there's not so much of a difference between the two, "but I don't think they're ready to become Chuunin. They need their basics shored up. Next round. So I've got time to consider a third teammate."  
  
"Try not to poach another Genin from a viable team," Tsunade-sama says, with a wry twist to her lips. "Or you're going to get some nasty rumours going around about you. And I've got enough problems without having to smooth the ruffled feathers of angry Jounin sensei."  
  
Kakashi smiles. "What if I get approached by another Genin who wants to transfer?"  
  
She grimaces, like she's bitten into a sour apple. "Assuming that they're right, and you'd be a better fit, we'd have to allow the transfer."  
  
"In that case," Kakashi says, picking his words carefully, "then maybe someone should be checking the suitability of the Jounin sensei before forcing them to take on team they might not be qualified to teach. I should never have become a sensei."  
  
"You're a good one."  
  
"I _wasn't_ ," he says. "That's the whole problem."  
  
It's one of them, at least. He's not sure enough of his standing in the village yet--or even of the real state of the village itself--to say he's pretty sure there's deeper problems than just his other self having been a bad sensei.  
  
Once he's done more looking into it… then maybe he'll mention it. Konoha should be stronger than it is. Training its Genin properly will help with that, but he's only one man, and out of his element.   
  
Instead, he asks another question on his mind. "What's been ascertained about my… situation?"  
  
Tsunade-sama sighs, standing and looking out one of the windows. "The longer you're here, the less likely it is that you've been de-aged or that it's a genjutsu. The predominant theory at the moment is that you've been swapped with yourself--that is, the Hatake Kakashi from this time, has taken your place in the past, while you've taken his place here. Thus far, we haven't found any way to undo the jutsu that caused this."  
  
Kakashi nods slowly. It's about what he expected. His feelings are decidedly mixed. He and the Kakashi from this time had the same origins but their impact is decidedly different.   
  
What makes them so different? He adds that to his list of things to look into. It might be important to know. If only for his own peace of mind.  
  
"In my time, in ANBU…" Kakashi says. "That's… unfortunate."  
  
He means that.  
  
"Yes," Tsunade-sama says, her voice heavy. "It is."  
  
They share a glance full of understanding. Being temporally displaced in ANBU is nothing good.  


* * *

  
  
Okonomiyaki does the both of them good. The restaurant they'd wound up at is busy, but not too busy, and populated mostly by civilians, which leaves fewer people to stare at them for any waves they've made in the gossip tree of Konoha's shinobi.  
  
She feels less stressed out and, unless she's misreading Ino entirely, some of the tension has left Ino, though she's not anywhere near her usual self either. Sakura picks at her leftovers, feeling pleasantly full but not overstuffed, debating if she wants to eat anything else, and covertly watches Ino drink.  
  
"Stop staring," Ino says.  
  
Well. Sakura had tried to be covert about it.   
  
"I cheated," Ino admits, tapping her temple. "You weren't terrible."  
  
"You're reading my mind again," Sakura sighs. "Honestly, Ino."  
  
Ino just wrinkles her nose at her. "I should probably go home," she says.  
  
Sakura cranes her neck back to squint at the restaurant's wall clock. What she sees, what she had suspected, makes her eyebrows raise. "It's early," she says. "You don't want to train?"  
  
That's a first and, more than anything else, that worries Sakura. Ino tackles training with wholehearted fervour usually.   
  
"I know," Ino says, grimacing. "But Shikamaru and Chouji have probably told their parents about my transfer by now. Dad'll need backup."  
  
She wonders if that's true or if Ino just feels like it should be. Sakura chews on the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. There's times when being a first generation shinobi really does mean she misses things. She knows that the Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi Clans have a long a complicated history together, but she has very little idea of what that history _is_.   
  
"Is it going to be bad?" she asked, fumbling for the right words for what she wants to ask. "What you've done?"  
  
Ino squints at her for a moment, then sighs. "I don't know. Maybe? Probably. Dad said he could handle the adults, but it's still going to cause things to be weird." Ino's eyes darken. "It might be less complicated if our Clan were bigger, or if I was a boy, but—neither of those things can exactly be changed. Not easily and not quickly, anyway."  
  
"I don't understand how those things matter," Sakura admits, though she's loathe to confess to ignorance. " _Can_ you tell me?"  
  
Ino opens her mouth, then shuts it, looking troubled and considering as she toys with her straw.  
  
A large group of half-drunk civilians stumbles through the door and, as they get seated, Sakura judges that Ino isn't going to say anything further in here—not about anything important.   
  
"Let's get out of here," Sakura says, waving for their bill and paying it all while Ino continues to frown.  
  
The air is cool in the coming twilight. It rushes through her hair, and tugs at her dress, and makes her spirits lift. Sakura revels in that as she heads towards their usual training ground. The moon isn't up yet, but it's a cloudless night as the stars begin to come out one by one.  
  
Ino follows her, a paler shadow, and neither of them speak.  
  
When they reach their training ground, Sakura falls into her usual stretching patterns and Ino follows her lead, for once, instead of it being the other way around.  
  
"I don't know what I can tell you," Ino admits, her voice a bit muffled as she leans deep into her splits, her face nearly touching the ground. "A lot of things aren't for out-Clan, unless they're formally allied with us, like the Nara and Akimichi."  
  
Sakura shifts her grip as she raises one foot over her head and balances there, feeling her muscles respond. "Do you have to be a Clan to formally ally?" she asks, wondering if it is just a matter of swearing oaths before she can find out more. "I mean, Ino, I'm your teammate." It still gives her a thrill to say that. "I'm in your corner no matter what."  
  
Ino lifts her head up. Sakura can tell she's smiling slightly only from how the shadows bunch around her cheeks. They'll have to light the lanterns once they're done stretching. "I know," Ino says, "but you're not an ally of the Clan. Nor would Daddy sign a contract with you. If we did, you'd benefit more than we would. It's not personal—it's business."  
  
Letting her foot fall, Sakura tries to tell herself that it's stupid that her feelings are hurt by that, no matter how 'not personal' it's supposed to be. She swings her other foot up, bracing it with her hands and pulling higher. "Oh."  
  
"Daddy might be willing to accept you as a formal ally to me, personally, since that's different than a Clan alliance," Ino says, after a few moments. "But I'd have to talk to him first and it's… with the other two Clans upset, it'd be a bad move for us to do that now. So I really don't know what I can tell you."  
  
Sakura forces herself to smile. "We should get to training anyway," she says. "It's fine." It's not fine, but Sakura tries hard not to feel rejected. Ino is _her_ teammate. She's being stupid. "Just… tell me what you can, when you know, okay?"  
  
"Of course," Ino says, getting to her feet. "Why wouldn't I?" Ino pauses mid-stretch. "Wasn't I going to go home rather than train?"  
  
Sakura laughs unevenly. "Want to sleepover instead, after training?" Sakura asks impulsively.   
  
"Your mom is going to kill you," Ino notes.  
  
"That's not a no," Sakura points out. "Is there anything you'd really be able to help your dad out with tonight if you went home? Can't your mom help him?"  
  
"No," Ino says, something unreadable in her voice. "Mom can't do anything in this situation. But—you're right. I probably can't either. Dad might not even let me talk to the other Clan heads."  
  
"Then come sleep over," Sakura wheedles, finishing her stretching and heading over to light the lanterns so they have enough light to correct their mistakes. "It'll do you good. In fact, my parents don't even have to know."  
  
Ino is startled into a laugh. Sakura hugs the noise close to her chest. "You're going to be so dead," Ino says. "What if we get caught?"  
  
"We're ninja," Sakura reminds her. "You're going to let yourself get caught?"  
  
The jab at Ino's pride does what she wants it to do. "As if," Ino says, sounding more like her usual self. "Fine. I'll sleepover. Now come here so I can kick your ass."  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi eyes both of his girls as they show up for training. Ino has borrowed some of Sakura's clothing, to his amusement, though he carefully says nothing about it. He's not surprised. Given the political mess Ino's transfer is likely going to cause for her father, it's probably for the best that Ino hadn't been home last night.  
  
"Before we start today," he says, as they look at him expectantly, "I'm going to tell you what I told Hokage-sama yesterday."  
  
The two of them exchange glances.  
  
"Are there problems with our team?" Ino asks, frowning. Sakura looks anxious at the thought.  
  
"No," he says, making sure his voice is reassuring without being patronizing. "It had nothing to do with that. It had to do with my… circumstances."  
  
The girls swap glances again, even more doubtful at that.  
  
"Does… does that mean they've figured out how to… fix what happened?" Sakura asks. Her tone of voice makes it clear that, if they had, she doesn't think it would be a real fix.   
  
Kakashi's eye curves into a smile that he doesn't really feel. His feelings are more mixed on being out of his own time, but it's gratifying to know his students want him around. "No," he says. "We discussed, and Hokage-sama has agreed, that my situation is to remain confidential for the moment."  
  
Ino's expression clears. "Oh," she says, "because of… Sarutobi-san, right?"  
  
Sakura looks inquiringly between the both of them. Ino just shakes her head and gestures once—for later, he assumes.   
  
"That's right," he says. "I understand that this is likely to cause a few more issues for you, Ino, given that you're likely to be questioned heavily about your decision. If people cause trouble for you, send them to me. That goes for you as well, Sakura. Do either of you have any questions?"  
  
They share a third glance, and then shake their heads.  
  
"Alright," he says. "If you have questions later, you know where to find me. Now stretch out and get ready for practice."  
  
They scatter and he takes a deep breath. _One step at a time,_ he reminds himself. _One step at a time._  
  
Then he focuses on what they're doing, and gets to work. "Sakura," he says, "make sure your back is completely straight. Ino, focus on your own footing, not on Sakura's."  
  


* * *

  
  
"So," Kakashi says, once he's dismissed Ino, and Sakura for the day, "it's a week early, but does she pass your expectations?"  
  
To all eyes, no one else is around, but Kakashi doesn't rely on just his eye—or on just Obito's eye, for that matter. And Yamanaka Inoichi melts out of the trees once his daughter is out of sight and easy hearing.  
  
"She's doing better," the blond man allows. His blue-eyed gaze is penetrating. "I'll reserve final judgement for in a week."  
  
"As you will," he says, unconcerned. If Yamanaka Inoichi had any real doubts, he'd have asked Ino to not tell her team of the transfer. That he hadn't bodes well for his final evaluation of Ino's progress under Kakashi's tutelage. "I assume you're not here for idle curiosity. What is it?"  
  
"My daughter's training is hardly what I'd call idle curiosity," Yamanaka Inoichi observes, and Kakashi glances at him in time to catch the faintly amused smile fade. "I have a favour to ask of you."  
  
Kakashi tilts his head slightly. "Oh?"  
  
"Ino's mentioned you're focusing on shoring up their training for the moment," he says, his gaze taking in the training ground is a sweeping glance. "Rather than going on missions."  
  
"That's right," Kakashi agrees. "Neither of them are desperate for the paycheques that D rank missions would bring them and most C rank missions are out of my comfort level for their current skills. And as a newly formed team, it's important to build synergy prior to putting it to the test in the field."  
  
Though Ino and Sakura have some of the best synergy he's ever seen, hands down, from Genin through ANBU.   
  
He slants a considering look at Ino's father. "Given that question… you want me to take them on a mission."  
  
"I would prefer if Ino were out of the village for at least a few days," Inoichi admits. "There are conversations taking place that I'd rather not have her hear until things have settled a little. Yes, I would ask that you accept a C rank mission for your team."  
  
Kakashi frowns. "Is there anything I should know about these conversations?"  
  
Internal clan politics are rarely spoken of to outsiders—and Kakashi is an outsider, twice over, from being out of time and from being the last member of the Hatake family—but when it impacts a Genin, then a sensei has a right to know in some circumstances.  
  
Yamanaka Inoichi shakes his head. "For now, there's not much to tell. The usual in-fighting and hard words are being said on all sides; accusations, mostly," he says, though he sounds like approves of the fact that Kakashi has asked. "I'd rather Ino not have to deal with all of that. She's more sensitive than she likes to admit. I'll keep you updated if that changes."  
  
"Alright," Kakashi says, though he's unsatisfied with that answer. "If there's a mission I think they can handle, we'll take it. If not…"  
  
Then he'll have to disappoint Yamanaka Inoichi. It's probably not a wise move, not when the man is both a Clan Head and in charge of his case, but Kakashi isn't going to risk the lives of his students when he isn't given more information than he has been.  
  
"I understand," Yamanaka Inoichi says. "And while it's damn inconvenient for what I want, I appreciate your care with them."  
  
Tucking away his irritation at not knowing more of what's going on, Kakashi shrugs. "I'm just following the example I was given," he says. He still wants to know more about why the other him hadn't done the same. But now, he's been given an opening to ask a question he's had almost since coming here. "Do you know why the quality of training has dropped? Is it solely a decade of relative peace?"  
  
Yamanaka Inoichi hums thoughtfully. "That's likely a contributing factor," the man says. "And, too, the Sandaime was a great man. But he was an old man, and tired, and pressed into a job that he didn't want. Things became lax in the little ways and those… those add up. You're not the only one that's noticed."  
  
Kakashi swallows the urge to retort that the training of their people is hardly a little thing. Yamanaka Inoichi's amused glance tells him that, even though he hasn't said anything, it's been heard anyway.   
  
"And that's all it is?" Kakashi asks.  
  
"Do you think there's more to it?" Yamanaka Inoichi asks interestedly.   
  
"I haven't decided yet," Kakashi says. "I'm still looking into it. But the way things are is weakening Konoha."  
  
And likely costing more lives than Konoha should be losing. Dying is always a risk for ninja, but for lives to be lost carelessly…   
  
"Yes, it is," Yamanaka Inoichi says, after a moment. "I can't deny that. Let me know what you decide—on everything."  
  
"One thing," Kakashi says, as Yamanaka Inoichi turns to go. "Have you considered that your request for me to take my team out of the village is another aspect of sheltering them when they shouldn't be? Ino cannot be shielded from the fallout of leaving her team entirely. It won't die out until she's dealt with it."  
  
"It's possible," Yamanaka Inoichi admits. "Though it's also a father's prerogative to make such a request—and the reverse could also be true. Is keeping them from missions really going to strengthen them? Either way, what actually happens, I'll leave in your hands. Look out for her."  
  
Then the man fades back into the trees and Kakashi is left alone in the training ground.  
  
 _Great,_ Kakashi thinks sourly. _Just what I needed. More problems and expectations._  
  
More decisions to make.


	9. Girl Talk

Sakura chews on her lower lip and tries to decide if she wants to make Ino mad or not. It wouldn't be an issue, really, except that she definitely needs to know if Ino is staying over at her place again tonight or not.  
  
They'd managed to hide the sleepover from her parents last night but Sakura isn't sure that that's a viable strategy for long term. Not to mention the amount of laundry she'd have to do if Ino is always wearing her clothes. And her parents would notice that, if only for the additional cost of water.  
  
But Ino has finally relaxed into something like her normal self. She'd been edgy and anxious from the time they'd quit training and that morning had been quiet until Hatake-sensei had gotten training going. Sakura doesn't want to throw Ino into another funk, but at the same time...  
  
"Oh, hey," Ino says brightly, tugging Sakura's shoulder so that she's looking in the right direction and dragging her out of her thoughts. "Look--it is Hinata-chan and Tenten!"  
  
Shading her eyes with one hand, Sakura smiles. Hinata and Tenten look like they've just settled down on the patio of a cafe with drinks in hand. "They don't look busy," she notes. "Want to go bother them?"  
  
It means putting off asking Ino the question she's going to have to ask, but Sakura doesn't mind that when Ino grins at her and, as they cross the street, dodging traffic, shouts a greeting to the other girls.  
  
"Long time no see!" Ino calls, leaning against the patio railing. "Mind if we crash your party?"  
  
Sakura rolls her eyes behind Ino's back--Ino elbows her--and Tenten laughs while Hinata smiles.  
  
"As long as you're buying something, feel free to hang out," Tenten says, with a glance at Hinata, who nods her agreement. "If you're here to mooch off our drinks, though, get out and don't even think about it."  
  
Ino laughs and heads for the door.  
  
Sakura lingers a moment, and says, "You've just made it a challenge for her," she advises. "Watch your drink."  
  
Then, to the sound of Hinata and Tenten's laughter, she hurries after Ino.  
  
By the time they get back outside, each with a drink in hand, Hinata and Tenten have dragged two more chairs over to their table. Sakura takes the one closest to Hinata, while Ino kicks Tenten's feet off the other spare chair and claims it.  
  
"Question," Sakura says, before Ino can say anything, "does anyone know why this place is called The Laughing Otter?"  
  
"I told you," Ino said, "it's because of how terrible the owner's hair is."  
  
The owner was a nice, older man--the man who'd made their drinks, in fact--but Sakura can't argue that his hair is terrible.  
  
She still pretty sure that's not why the shop is named as it is.  
  
"No idea," Tenten says.  
  
Hinata looks thoughtful, but shakes her head. "I don't know anything for certain," she says, "though I've heard it suggested that it has something to do with a summons."  
  
"Otter summons, huh?" Ino considers that. "That'd be pretty neat. But it's not as funny as my suggestion."  
  
"It's probably more likely," Sakura opines. "But enough about that--how are you two doing? What have you been up to lately? It's been forever since we've seen you."  
  
Back in the Academy, Sakura hadn't been friends with Hinata, but they'd been amicable to one another. She hadn't known Tenten at all. But after everything that had happened in the Chuunin Exam and beyond, they... weren't friends, exactly, but there was a bond there that hadn't been present before.  
  
Something stronger than a casual friendship would've suggested.  
  
"My parents are all 'when are you going to get promoted'?" Tenten says, laughing and swatting away Ino's hand as it reaches for her drink. "My mom's side of the family, now, they get it, but my dad? He tries, but he doesn't understand how it works. Mom's explained it to him but it's like--in one ear and out the other. It's sweet that he thinks I should be promoted, but…"  
  
All four of them sigh.  
  
None of them had even made it to the finals of the last exams.   
  
"We'll get there," Ino says. "No doubt about that."  
  
And when Ino says, Sakura believes it.   
  
As Ino quizzes Tenten on her training regime--and arranges a training date with her in the same breath; Sakura would be envious of that, but she doesn't want to be Tenten's pincushion--Sakura turns to Hinata.   
  
"Have you been doing alright?" she asks. "How is your team after everything? How is Kiba?"  
  
Hinata smiles, her pale eyes lighting up. "Everyone's made a complete recovery from… from that mission," she says. "It's made training slow, but Kurenai-sensei has had us working on building our tactics and strategies instead of furthering only our physical skills. Kiba-kun complains, but… but it's been good. How, that is--I mean--"  
  
"My new team's doing great," Sakura says, surprised at how even her voice is, as Hinata trails off, looking flustered.   
  
"I… I heard that you could have been apprenticed to Tsunade-sama," Hinata says, after a moment, her cheeks still pink.   
  
"I was, for a little bit," Sakura admits, since the way Hinata makes it sound, it sounds pretty special. "And I still go training with her when there's time. But healing isn't what I wanted to do with myself. I was just… tired of being left behind."  
  
And Sasuke had Orochimaru and Naruto had Jiraiya.   
  
Asking for Tsunade-sama to teach her had been… an easy way to level the field, in her own mind.   
  
But while she enjoys training with Tsunade-sama, Sakura finds that with each day that passes, she's more confident in her choice. She'd liked the medical training, being good at it, and getting attention for it.   
  
With Hatake-sensei, and Ino, though, she loves her team.   
  
"I don't know what my strengths will turn out to be," Sakura continues. "But I'm okay with that, right now."  
  
Somewhat to her own surprise, that's the entire truth.   
  
Ino laughs at something Tenten says, drawing Sakura's attention away from Hinata.   
  
"We've… we've heard some of what's going on, Ino-san," Hinata says tentatively, as the conversation takes a breather. "And we won't pry, but…"  
  
"You need someone to shriek at, you can shriek at us," Tenten says, picking up when Hinata trails off, her words flip but her brown-eyed gaze serious. "I mean, for stress relief if nothing else."  
  
"W-why you've decided to change teams isn't any of our business," Hinata says, stammering a bit, her hands wrapped around the edges of her jacket. "But you… you were the real top of the class, Ino-san. I think… that is, we think, if you made that decision then it was for a good reason."  
  
Ino's smile freezes and Sakura's stomach goes all twisted and taut with anxiety.  
  
"I'll think about it," Ino says, in a voice that would make a glacier seem hot. "Thanks."  
  
But Sakura notices the way Ino slants a considering glance Hinata's way and her anxiety doubles. It's an ugly, really ugly, part of her that wails in incoherent envy at the very thought of Ino being able to confide in someone else when she can't talk to her due to Clan rules.   
  
_I bet Hinata could be Ino's formal ally no problem,_ Sakura thinks, then squashes her bitterness.  
  
If Ino needs help, or even someone to talk to, she _should_ have it. No matter how small and insignificant it makes Sakura feel.   
  
"I appreciate it, Hinata-chan, Tenten-san," Ino says, though when Sakura looks up from her drink, Ino's eyes are fixed on her. "When I make decisions, I know what I'm doing and what--and who--I'm picking."  
  
Sakura flushes, both with embarrassment at having been caught out by Ino, and with pleasure at having been _chosen_ by Ino.   
  
"Still, any port in a storm, right?" Tenten says.  
  
Ino's smile twitches. "Funny," she says, "you don't look much like a boat."  
  
That makes all of them laugh, though Sakura's is a bit uneven and Tenten kicks Ino's shin.  
  
Ino leans back in her chair. "Seriously," she says, "enough about me. Hinata-chan, how's your heart doing? Any issues getting back to training?"  
  
Guiltily, Sakura realizes that she's barely spared a thought for Hinata's condition after the Chuunin Exams and what her cousin had done to her. She'd been more focused on the aftermath of the mission that had finished off her original team.  
  
Sure, Naruto and Sasuke are both alive, but that, she thinks, was where the team died.   
  
It had just taken her longer to realize it.   
  
"Didn't that guy--that traitor, Yakushi--help you out?" she asks. "Did Tsunade-sama check to make sure he didn't leave anything nasty behind?"  
  
"Yes," Hinata says. "Father insisted, of course, and Tsunade-sama cleared me herself. I'm as fit as ever for active duty, though there's a note in my file in case I'm brought back injured from a mission."  
  
"That makes sense," Ino says, toying with her straw and, Sakura is amused to see, that she's managed to switch her drink with Tenten's and is casually drinking Tenten's. "A lot of drugs and treatments are hard on the heart. They'd want to have that information, right, Sakura?"  
  
Sakura nods. "Yeah, the heart's a tricky thing."  
  
"Tsunade-sama said the same thing," Hinata agrees. "I was curious about the notation myself, so I asked."  
  
"There's a lot of poisons that take advantage of that too, isn't there?" Tenten asks, sipping her (Ino's) drink and grimacing. "You should work on your immunities. Ino, you aren't going to have teeth when you're old--and give me my iced coffee back."  
  
Ino ignores that demand. "Tons of poisons exploit the heart," she says. "Most drugs are poisonous in large enough doses anyway--what _were_ your immunities like the last time you got tested, Hinata-chan? If you know them, I can make suggestions so that a poisoned blade out in the field is less likely to ruin you."  
  
Tenten leans over and wrestles her drink out of Ino's hands. "I know mine," she says mildly, after a sip of her coffee. Ino rolls her eyes and takes her own drink back. "And I dislike ruination when it comes to myself. You want to help me with mine? What are yours like, Sakura?"  
  
Sakura laughs. "Should we turn this into a mini-seminar on immunities? Are you up for that, Ino?"  
  
Ino rolls her shoulders, considering that. "I guess so," she says, "though it probably shouldn't be done here. The civilians are getting restless."  
  
It's only then that Sakura realizes that all the nearby civilians have edged away from them.  
  
"My place isn't far from here," Tenten offers. "What do you think, Hinata? Do you want to spend the afternoon on poison immunities? It's not relaxing, exactly, but it's not _really_ training either."  
  
"I'd count it as downtime," Ino says, "and I'm fine to teach if you're all that insistent on it. Listen, dumb ones, and I'll knock the fluff out of your brains."  
  
Then Ino yelps, wriggling in her seat.  
  
Sakura laughs, realizing that both she and Tenten had kicked Ino at the same time.   
  
"I'd like that," Hinata says, smiling. "Thank you, all of you."  
  
As they leave the café, Sakura falls into step with Ino. "Are you coming to my place tonight?" she asks, both Ino's good mood and their company making it easier to just… well, ask, rather than agonize over it.  
  
"I'm waiting on my dad to get back to me about it," Ino says, her eyes going distant. "He's working on something he doesn't want me to see right now. I'll try again after our seminar."  
  
Tenten turns back and calls, "Hurry up, you guys!"  
  
They hurry until they've caught up. "If this goes well," Sakura says, "I was thinking that we could maybe do it again?"  
  
"What?" Ino says. "Immunities?"  
  
Sakura swats at Ino. "No, Pig, I meant this--swapping information. There's got to be things we can help each other with other than that, you know?" She hesitates. "Well, except for maybe me."  
  
Her stomach swoops as she says it, but it's honest. Of the four of them, Sakura is the least likely to know anything useful.   
  
"Another pity party, Forehead?" Ino says, swatting back at her. "Get over yourself."  
  
"What?!" Sakura yelps.  
  
"Ano… I think Ino-san has a point," Hinata says. "Of the four of us, Sakura-san, you were the best at the bookish parts of training. Tenten-san aced history, but…"  
  
Tenten shrugs. "It interests me the most. But other things are more useful now that we're out in the field. There's got to be a lot of things you could teach us, Sakura. Don't sell yourself short."  
  
Something hot and tight rises in her throat. Sakura swallows past it, blinking hard, and vowing that she'll remember this later, the next time she doubts herself.   
  
(And she will doubt herself again and again, she already knows this. Years of lacking self-confidence and then the absolute fiasco that Team 7 had been had only reinforced those bad habits. Breaking them is hard.)  
  
"Well, I...," she trails off. "I guess, maybe. Ino's the first one up though."  
  
"As if it'd ever be different," Ino says. "I'm always number one. And, if I'm not, I _should_ be."  
  
They all laugh, though there's an element of truth to it as well. Ino had been the number one rookie of her year in the Academy. That Sasuke had been named as such instead of her was something Ino had harped on more than once.  
  
Now, Sakura wonders, why they'd done that.  
  
Had it been to send a message that the last scion of a once powerful Clan was still just as strong as his Clan's reputation had demanded he be? Had it been an attempt to tie Sasuke more thoroughly to the village?   
  
Or had it been something Ino's father had wanted?  
  
Ino hooks her arm companionably through Sakura's and drags her forward. "Come on, we're almost there!" she says. "And we'll talk about poisoning all of you!"  
  
Hinata makes a squeaking noise of dismay and Tenten throws her head back and laughs.  
  


* * *

  
  
Kakashi stews over Inoichi's request that night, even as he follows his own training regime (looking after Genin is no excuse to get soft), until the only thing he can think about is the rush of blood in his head and the pleasant ache and burn and drag of exertion.  
  
By the time he's finished with training, he's almost in a good mood. He wraps that around himself as he stops at a noodle stand to get food and heads back to his apartment. The good mood doesn't last, it's gone by the time he gets home, but the sweet heaviness of his limbs stays with him and that alone helps steady him.  
  
If it were only his comfort to think about, he'd just go to bed. But instead he rattles around his kitchen like loose change in a can, eating takeout noodles from a box and mulling over what to do.  
  
He doesn't _want_ to take his team out of the village yet. They have fantastic synergy, some of the best teamwork he's ever seen, and they'll, eventually, be excellent kunoichi.  
  
But they're not there yet.  
  
Back to the beginning is where he's taken their training and he's done that for a _reason_. They need it.  
  
He supposes taking them on a few D rank missions would be fine--and perhaps he should do that, at least a couple a week, just for a change of pace for them; as a reward for their hard work--but those are all in the village, which wouldn't take care of what Inoichi had requested.  
  
Kakashi wishes he could ask Pakkun what he thinks. But Pakkun, and the rest of his dogs, aren't available to him in this time and there's no one he can really ask for advice. No one living, anyway.  
  
Wait…  
  
His noodles sitting heavily in his stomach, Kakashi pauses as a thought occurs to him. No one living, huh?  
  
Inoichi's request to take Ino out of the village was to get her away from the gossip and in-fighting between her clan and the Nara and the Akimichi. If he could manage that without having to leave the village, then Inoichi would have nothing to complain about.  
  
 _I'll still check the missions desk_ , he thinks virtuously, with a covert glance at the time. It's late; there's still plenty of time before morning. _I said I would. There might be something there I don't mind them taking on._  
  
He doubts it. He knows the kinds of missions that are C rank and they're not the kinds of missions he wants Ino and Sakura doing right now, no matter how little actual danger they'd be in with him around.  
  
If he's right, however… there's a few things he wants to check first, though, and then… well. Then they'd see.  
  
But he thinks he's found a way to make both himself and Inoichi happy.  
  
Whether the girls will be happy about it remains to be seen but, if nothing else, he thinks they'll appreciate the variety and the chance to snoop.  
  
They're good girls, after all, and he's never known a kunoichi who'd willingly turn down a chance to pry into someone else's life.  
  
 _And if it works out the way I hope, I might just get my dogs back._  
  
Kakashi isn't counting on that, he really isn't. He can't afford to wish that much for it, no matter how much he misses them.  
  
But he can hope.  
  
He drops the remnants of his supper in the trash and heads back out into the village. There's plenty of time to look into things before his girls show up, but he would like to get some sleep in the interim as well--which means rushing just a little.  
  
To his own surprise, he finds he doesn't mind. It feels good to have to run around to arrange this. He doesn't even mind the invasion of privacy it's going to bring.  
  
 _Hokage-sama might raise her eyebrows,_ he thinks, leaping from roof to roof. _But I don't mind. If it's done this way, then it's fine. I think I can handle it, if it's them._  
  
He trusts his girls, unruly and young as they are.


End file.
